


But What God Gives

by Kibbers



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anal Sex, Angel Wings, Angst, Death, Death!Gabe, Earthquakes, Explicit Sexual Content, Heaven, Hospitals, Illnesses, Isolation, M/M, Ocean, Oral Sex, Soul Dealing, Souls, death au, diner, soul claiming, teacher!sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 02:37:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 50,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7416304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kibbers/pseuds/Kibbers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Metatron takes over heaven and starts to send angels, wingless, falling to Earth, Gabriel takes over Death's job and thinks himself lucky to have found a place to protect his wings. Centuries later, after Chuck retakes the reigns, Gabe finds himself still there, still taking souls and dealing death from his palms. Ben is just another name on his list for the day. But when Sam Winchester offers up his soul instead, Gabe writes them up a deal. Sam becomes his assistant for the next two weeks, Gabe searching for glimpses of Sam's soul to sketch to completion and Sam fighting to keep it hidden around the rules they set in place. As their deal begins, both of them start to wonder if they're going to make it through these two weeks after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First and foremost, there is death in this fic. Lots of it. Gabriel is literally death. If that bothers you, click away. Right now. I don't mind! Please, please, for your mental health and mine, if you think this may trigger you in any way exit this fic. I have plenty others for you to read with more fluff than you can handle.  
> ART COMING SOON! Okay, that done, I need to send out a huge thank you to my artist Tony! Such a wonderful artist, go send her some love [ here](http://teenytinytony.tumblr.com/)!  
> Also huge shout out to my betas [Yana](http://annie-thyme.tumblr.com/), [ ConsultingCas](http://consultingcas.tumblr.com/), and [ Rachel](http://ravenclawencyclopedia.tumblr.com/)! You guys are awesome, thank you so much! Extra special shout out to [Yana](http://annie-thyme.tumblr.com/) for being an absolutely wonderful, supporting individual, without whom I don't think I'd be writing fic at all! Also, the whole soul/wing reflection idea comes from this [ post here](https://kibberswrites.tumblr.com/post/136103020753/everythingelsegoesherethen)!  
> Okay, all that out of the way, enjoy my Gabriel Big Bang!

It was the sanitizer soaking the air, seeping into skin and eyes and mouth, bitter and lingering. Or, maybe it was the worry seeping from the pacers and the waiters, choking them all and leaving their chests tight. That’s the reason hospitals were one of the top ten hated places to the humans. It was why they gravitated towards the windows, towards the doors, towards the rooftop despite the warning signs. _See here_ , the signs seemed to say in their seeking, _fresh air untouched by grief_. That along with the whole panic, pain, perishing thing. The word hospital had long ago been turned into a boulder on the chest.

In this hospital, the walls weren’t white like in the movies. There was no emptiness in the air, no walls so blank eyes glide right past them. Instead, the lobby was painted into a jungle, threaded with bright orange tigers with stethoscopes around their furry necks, with monkeys covered in band-aids lost in cartoon greenery. The hallways morphed into overgrown gardens, into outer space full of astronaut doctors standing on planets the kids could color on with dry-erase markers. Gabriel had to admit if he’d been born human that’s a job he wouldn’t have minded so much, space doctor, though the demand on that was lacking as of the century he walked. Maybe the next, or the one after. Timelines fell into each other in his mind. There was no pulling them apart.

Even despite the color-filled halls, the visitors there still held their breath close to their chests, trying to keep the grieving out. As if they thought it would catch. As if, by keeping their lungs untouched, they’d escape the grief. Maybe they could. Gabriel, in his heavenly design, didn’t need breath. It was just a guise he donned when he needed to blend with the ground walkers, the fragile lot, the humans.

When he’d first started to let his feet travel the earth, fists tucked into pockets, he’d felt eyes roam his body time and time again. At first, he shrugged it off. Everyone felt like people stared, and his vessel was a looker to be sure. But then the eyes would narrow, fingers tightened into fists. When he’d step into rooms, they all would gravitate to the walls without being completely sure as to why they wanted to ground themselves. Their brains were slower to figure out what their bodies could feel in an instant.

It took some experimenting to figure out what it was that gave him away. He changed clothes, changed vessels, changed his hair, his blinks, his smile. It wasn’t until he let out a sigh of frustration that they all let their breath too fall from their lips in relief. He needed to prove his humanness, and to do it, he needed to breathe. Or, they needed to think he did.

Now he was Death, and he needed to blend all the better. He’d stir panic if he didn’t.

As he slid through the hallway of the hospital, the jungle turning into a pirate-dotted ocean, he let his chest rise and fall, let his eyes blink, let his footsteps echo off the tile floor. He passed a pair, mother and father where they leaned against each other despite the plastic digging into the skin of their hips from the only chairs the hospital could provide. They took no second glance, didn’t notice Death breezing past their bent heads. Down the hall, the last door on the left, he took a deep breath and went full ghost, pulled a gone girl and disappeared with a wink.

Inside the room was a bed. Inside the bed was a boy. In place of the baby fat other kids his age still held, his cheeks sank into his face. In place of the lungs that pumped him down hills and across soccer fields, there was only shallowness and flood. But still there was a smile on his cracking lips, and Gabriel had to nod an invisible nod to that as he crossed the room gently, trying not to stir the air, and sat on the windowsill to wait.

See, Ben here was a tiptoe case. He had one foot in Death and the other in Life, and Gabriel was just here in case he needed to weigh in. Chuck hardly ever asked for his opinion, but still he sent Gabriel running here and there. A chicken with his head cut off, though Chuck gave him wings. Only to fly farther, Gabriel muttered, only to do his bidding faster.

“Just in case,” Chuck had said that morning.

“Why, though? What could I tell you that you don’t already know?”

“Just, go,” Chuck sighed.

“Anyone else getting deja vu?” Gabriel asked, looking to Cas where he sat just outside the door at his desk clear of clutter.

“Gabriel,” Chuck started.

“Oh right, we’ve just had this damn conversation so many times I get it confused.”

“Out,” Chuck pointed.

Out Gabriel went.

He knew there was no use arguing. To the hospital he’d go. In exchange, the list of deaths he was responsible for was cut down to five. He was fine with spending the day perched on the windowsill he’d claimed, if only he’d remembered to grab something to do. His sketchbook, a deck of cards, anything to fill the hours of watching someone wither.

He usually only had between ten and fifty per day, the rest delegated to guardian angels and Chuck himself. A few, even, could find their way to heaven’s door without needing a guide at all. Most of them were freshly fallen angels and the others who had walked heaven’s walls in the past decade. The map to heaven would itch at their skulls throughout their life, most of them aware of the itch but not the cause. Until Death, that is. Until Gabriel.

Gabriel got the souls that Chuck wanted to see personally, the ones that needed the most help, the dullest and the brightest. He’d touched thousands and still couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason they’d all landed on his list, though he never did ask in the beginning. He’d just shrugged and took them without complaint.

Sitting on the windowsill, Gabriel tucked his wings further into his back, peered out the window as the boy on the bed pulled a book from his pillowcase and started to read, cross-legged and bent over. His spine poked through the paper gown at his back, shoulders sharp from beneath his skin. The town below was already awake, bleating the chatter of morning through honking horns and sunlight. He didn’t know where he was, hadn’t bothered to catch the name before he snapped to the soul that lived inside this hospital. What was the use, when he’d be gone in a snap again? The town mattered not, the soul the only reason he was here at all.

On his way in, he’d passed the boy’s mother, white tennis shoes squeaking against the tile of her son’s hospital room. Behind her, the smell of sadness and grief and something fruity sank into Gabriel’s air and he was glad for his useless lungs. Some things were too heavy to breathe, even for Death. Part of it, he knew, was left in his wake. But he couldn’t help being what he was. Every story needed a bad guy, and this one just happened to be mighty fine, just to add a little beauty to injury.

Gabriel sat in the silence, the sun creeping down closer to light the horizon on fire, and he waited for something to let him know which way the fates would swing. What was it that made Chuck decide? What should he have been looking for? He turned back to the boy, trying to spot the parts of him with toes on the side of life and instead his eyes found a man outside the room, just visible through the gap in between two blinds. He was tall, brown hair long enough to tuck behind his ears, jawline sharp enough to slice the world in half. In another lifetime, Gabriel’s chills would be from his looks alone. But in this one, it was something he couldn’t quite place.

Gabriel leaned closer, peering through the smudged glass, trying to figure out why the man had caught his attention at all. Was it the leather jacket draped around his shoulders? Was it the smile he wore behind his eyes? Couldn’t have been. Gabriel had seen thousands before this and none had him itching to get closer still.

After chatting with a nurse out the window, the man turned into Ben’s room, giving Gabriel the opportunity to stare all he wanted. Even as he sat, even as the boy turned and lit up, he couldn’t place the blame for a small itching that had burrowed into his chest.

“Hey, Ben. How’s your world today?” The man asked as he sat.

Ben, closed his book instantly, smiled so as not to disturb the room. Softly so. “Still spinning.”

The seat the man sank into let up a cloud of the scent Ben’s mother had left behind and it made Gabriel’s fingers twitch. He wanted to cover the man’s mouth, hurry him from the room. Protect him from the heaviness even he didn’t want inside. But instead Gabriel watched as he inhaled the blackness and hardly noticed, beaming at Ben instead. “Got your homework for the week. Want to go over it now?”

Ben nodded and the man flipped open a folder Gabriel now noticed in his hands, to reveal a stack of papers crammed inside. He flipped through the first few, humming something upbeat while he sorted through the mess. “Alright, Mrs. Harvelle wrote on your math notes, so you should be good there,” he handed Ben a few pages, “and Ms. Bradbury’s doing the reenactment this week, so I’ll stop by and record that if you want? It’s the Boston Massacre if I’m remembering right.”

“Yeah, yeah. That’d be great.” The man paused at Ben’s face, arch of his smile crumbling into nothing.

“Sorry, buddy. Next one, you’ve got first dibs on position, okay? She promised me.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ben said, face plastered with a plastic smile.

“Alright, here’s the notes from the book we went over in English. Make sure you’ve got that essay done next Wednesday for me, alright? I’ll be by Monday if you have any questions on the rough draft.”

“And what about Creative Writing?”

“This week we’re doing letters. Try not to pick someone you know. Bonus points for inanimate objects, something non-living. I brought an example if you want one?”

Ben held out his hand and the man, his teacher, slid the thin notebook paper into his hand. Gabriel could feel the words more than he could see them. But he read along nonetheless. _Dear sky,_ it said.

_There are thousands of ways to talk about you but we only ever use one. “Whoa, look at the sky” we say. Is that enough? Is there enough wonder in our voices to show how much we love every part of you? Even, especially, the parts we don’t understand? Are our eyes as heavy as you feel somedays? Does the thunder hurt?_

_I hope, my sky, that our wonder is enough. Or these words. We haven’t much else to give. You are too far away, though sometimes it seems like we can reach out and touch. I am sorry, my fingers are not long enough for that. We were not made to touch you. Icarus showed us that. Only to look. I hope that’s okay._

_Love, Jo._

When Ben finished, he handed the paper back to the man and set his stack of homework in his lap. “Okay, cool. When’s it due?”

The man shrugged and while he talked about deadlines and homework, Gabriel forced himself to lean back until wings met windowpane, and he closed his eyes, searching. It was his eyes, Gabriel thought, that were so familiar. Or the way pieces of his soul seemed to shine through his skin. Not enough to make out what his soul was, or where, but enough to see the glow brush the air around him.

Gabriel had only a vague taste of salt on his tongue and he knew he’d stayed too long with the humans. The sadness, the grief, was creeping in. He'd drown soon, and so he needed to find somewhere clean and untouched by the acid left behind where Life met Death and danced.

As the man settled in with Ben, book of poetry pulled from the jacket hugging his shoulders, Gabriel whispered his goodbye.

* * *

Across the world, as the sun set another town aflame, Death stood in the center of a road crumbling.  A chill crept over the neighborhood, despite the thick heat that had been present and suffocating all day, the lawns closest to Gabriel dotted with spots of brown. Outside the one-story, uniform houses of the street, the bushes and neatly manicured flowers curled in on themselves, colors sinking behind dark green, in hiding. In preemptive mourning. The streetlights dimmed to a dull glow, becoming a haze in the darkness one by one.

If this had been a movie, the snoring shaking the third and fifth houses down would have been unnoticable. The camera instead would glimpse the moon rising opposite the sun, and the stars already beginning to settle in for the night. Would miss the feeling of dreams fluttering behind eyelids, of the unsettle and soft nostalgia seeping off those still awake at this dark hour.

Here, there were two. Two sipping bitter coffee at their tiny kitchen table pushed against the front-room’s wall to free space for all of the boxes they had piled in the middle of the new carpet and hadn’t yet gotten around to unpacking. They had only been there twelve hours, after all, and their feet couldn’t hold up their weight any longer. At least for now.

At the table, the young woman sat, squinting out the window, leaning closer to the smudged glass panels. It was hard to see much of anything, though she didn’t remember the world being that dark only ten minutes ago. _How the light goes so quickly here_ , she thought. _Strange. Back home, it never did disappear this fast_. The moon broke through the glass, too bright and watery. She turned to her husband, sitting across the table and lost in something bright and flashing on his phone. “Where’s the Windex?”

“Uhhh,” he started, but trailed off, fingers still tapping at the screen. She waited, eyebrows raised, but he had forgotten her. Sighing, she stood, chair legs scraping the already scuffed tile floor. The house hadn’t been new. That was too high a price to meet for their first home. She was fine slipping into walls that already knew how to hold people inside, walls that already knew the taste of laughter. Lord knows she’d need the reminder some days.

She tore the tape off the box labeled ‘Cleaning Supplies’ in curling scrawl and rummaged around until she found the almost-empty bottle of blue in the bottom, the lid not all the way screwed on and leaking onto her hands and the cardboard, all the other supplies they’d shoved into it, too, coated with blue. Sighing, she wiped both her hands and the bottle with a paper towel and went to the front windows, spraying them a few times and watching the liquid slide to the bottom like heavy rain.

Movement caught the corner of her eye, drawing her gaze to something smooth and dark, drifting down the darkening street. It was blurred, the figure, through the thick, soapy liquid still on the glass and she swiped it away quickly. Who would be outside at a this time of night? But there was no one there when she peered into the darkness again. She’d been up for hours, in a new place. Her mind was getting creative in its exhaustion. Shrugging, she went on to the next window, then the last, reaching over her husband to wipe the panels clean.

She frowned. They were no easier to see out of. A wall of fog had sealed itself against her windows, though she didn’t think fog made a home in places like Arizona. The sun burned off any hint of moisture from the air long before it could become anything that lingered. But, still, she could hardly see the road now, and she turned to her husband to ask him if he too noticed the darkness.

The streetlight just outside their home, yellow light spilling onto the street, flickered into nothing. Turning back, she stared at her reflection now, blond hair falling from her messy ponytail and wisping into her face.

“We’ll have to call the HOA. Streetlight’s out,” she said.

“Don’t think association is in charge of that,” her husband muttered into his phone.

“Fine then, the City. I’ll put it on the list for tomorrow, yeah?”

“Sure, yeah...tomorrow...sounds good.”

She wrote it on the list anyway, knowing she’d be the one to end up calling. She’d forget if she didn’t. When she was done, she turned around, hands on her hips, to take in their new home.

Outside, in the fog-heavy and growing colder night, the figure she’d seen floated above the ground, midnight colored cloak grazing the ground and leaving a trail of frost in its wake. Anyone who caught a glimpse of him soon forgot. That was the way of things. Even the woman’s handwriting would disappear from her to-do list, the streetlights functioning normally as soon as he was gone and done. Until he needed to return that is.

He drifted down the street through the darkness, blending in with the cold, too bright starlight. He inhaled, reveling in how it made his useless lungs sing. If anyone could see him, if their eyes were allowed to linger, they’d see his midnight-black and star-speckled wings, them too brushing the asphalt with their size as they trailed behind him, a mirror to the stars above. The stars were the only souls looking.

His steps were light on the ground. The Earth did not notice he was there. He blended with the night, and so that’s what he became. Most of the time, at least. It was easier to do his job, out in the open when no one could see him. The cloaking used energy he didn’t always feel like spending on trying to be invisible.

He approached the metal bench at the edge of the deserted playground, the swing set squeaking in the gentle wind he carried on his shoulders, in his breath. Something small and scurrying darted from the bushes as they shriveled, tearing across the browning grass and he tracked it until he could not any longer. This was not what he was here for.

On the bench, there was a man. Elderly, white hair tucked beneath a beanie tattered with holes and the beginnings of a beard scratching at his cheeks below that. He was curled in a ball, arms wrapped around his knees, hip digging into the metal below him, leaving an indent in his skin. He was a skeleton asleep, bones unmoving and stiff. To be fair, he wasn’t much thicker than a skeleton either, ribcage protruding beneath his thin t-shirt and fingers brittle.

Gabriel approached slowly, feet not touching the gum spattered sidewalk, and he stood above the man for a moment. Above them, the streetlight flickered, but Gabriel did not let it burst into nothing. He would only be a moment, and the fog he’d brought in was too thick to see through anyway, more like smoke hovering above the ground. As if the man could sense him looming, his eyes shot open. He locked red-rimmed eyes with Gabriel’s and froze.

“I’m not doing anything wrong.” His words were weak, his body not strong enough to waste what little else it had left on words. Gabriel waited, a small grin on his lips. “Who are you?”

“You know.”

The man wheezed as he sat up, a rasp against the smoothness of the night. “No. I don’t. Piss off.”

“No can do, sir. Rules are rules. Now,” Gabriel tilted his head, grin growing wider and power tingling in his fingertips as the man’s soul appeared, “any last words?”

“Let me sleep, asshole.”

“Not what I would have gone with, but to each their own I suppose.”

Gabriel let his wings unfurl into the sky behind him. The man sucked in a shallow breath, his eyes widening. He started to hold out his hands, slivers of bone in the moonlight as he scrambled away. Couldn’t lift an eyelash, those fingers. Gabriel rolled his eyes.

“Please, don’t,” the man pleaded.

“It’s my job, man.”

“So you-you’re…” He waved his hand at Gabriel, not wanting to say it.

“Death, yup. That’s me,” Gabriel held out his hands, wings fluttering at his back, reveling in the wind sweeping through his feathers. At the freedom.

The man sat up on the bench, still curled in on himself. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Hey, I’m the messenger here. Just doing my job.”

“But, don’t you control all this?”

“Hell no. I don’t control much at all. The time, maybe. How smoothly it goes. Other than that, it’s all your life and a thousand different factors that brought us here. Well, you here really. My wings brought me here.”

The man started to mutter into his hands, soft words that sounded like spring prayers. But it was winter and praying would not change the season, nor his fate.

“Ready to go?” Gabriel asked. It was no use. They never were.

“My daughter,” the man whispered.

“She’ll be fine.”

Gabriel held out his hand and waited for the man to take it. Most of the humans knew not to fight this, despite their fear. Humans had always been so stubbornly fearless, climbing cliff faces into the sky, it was a wonder. It took him and him alone to fizzle that all to nothing.

“Your wings,” the man whispered as he reached up with his fingers to close the distance, his own hand shaking as it stretched from his body. From fear, from weakness, from cold. Didn’t matter. Wouldn’t matter in a moment. Gabriel didn’t care.  As his fingers met Gabriel’s he hissed. “Ouch, stings.”

“Could be worse,” Gabriel said. “What do you see?”

As the human’s skin met Death’s, there was no bright light, no boom or rattle. The world had too many people to let out a mourning boom for each and every one. Instead the world grew grass, grew trees, grew flowers to remember them by. In front of Gabriel, his shadowed form still attached to his soul stepped from his body and they stood side by side in the darkness. “Beach sand.”

“Ahh,” Gabriel said. In his hand, he held a soul as large as his palm. Sandy and soft.

“I used to take her there,” the shadowed man said, looking at his body on the bench, “to the sand. Seemed to stretch for miles.”

“Hmm.”

“Got everywhere, though. Could never shake it, even when you wanted to.” He looked down like he was going to find sand on this part of him too, on his soul.

They stood in silence. It was always a bit awkward, as the soul glanced at the body left behind. Gabriel knew they needed a minute, but he had things to do. Other souls to take.

“Come along,” Gabriel said. He turned away, drifting back down the street, man’s soul trailing behind him. He tried to catalogue the man’s soul, the swirling colors of beach sand that radiated from his fingertips. Each soul lived somewhere different. The soles of their feet, the notch of their spine. Human’s carried their souls in the place they felt most holy, even if they didn’t realize it. Chuck’s divine plan and whatever other bullshit he decided to give for the reason he gave them weak spots to hide.

The man’s soul’s gait, even, was staggered, his limp from before still there despite the bodily relief. A habit had formed and though the pain was gone, he couldn’t quite shake it. At his sides, the outline of his hands shook still. That, too, would pass. The stars were smiling as the streetlights flickered back to their yellow glow and Gabriel, at the end of the street, linked hands with the man and snapped them to heaven.

Some days his job was hard. Other days, like today, it was simple. Just a midnight stroll, alone with his only friend, the night, and the soft darkness it brought. The two tended to go hand in hand.

Someone would find the man’s body in the morning and the street would fill with flashing lights for a few hours. The most attention the man would ever get in his life. He’d be long gone, though, sent to wherever Chuck sent him. Gabriel didn’t much care about that part, either. He just had to deliver them to Chuck’s door. Judgement was beyond and Gabriel never went beyond.

On the street, the hibernating flowers peppering the neighborhood opened back up, moonlight glinting off their leaves. Black-winged death had gone and he had spared them all. They told the world, their sighs of relief becoming colored pops against the winter night. Tomorrow, the neighborhood would marvel at the miracle, flowers in winter. Tomorrow, Gabriel will be long gone, too far away to hear their gasps at what he left behind.

* * *

 Back home, Gabriel made his way through the charcoal gray walls of his living room, dotted with furniture, and up the wood-railed staircase to the third floor. He let his fingertips run along the bare walls as he did, the smoothness a relief against his soul-singed fingers. At the top of the stairs, he kicked his shoes off and there they’d stay until the morning.

The first door was his room, the rest of the hall full of empty bedrooms and white walls pristine and unmarked. A single window, flung open, let the moonlight in. Gabriel sat down at his desk, glass top smudged with fingerprints he didn’t bother to clean. From the set of black drawers at his side, he pulled out a sheet of paper and an envelope. He had a report to write. His list of jobs for the day was done. Cas was coming to check in.

Gabriel wrote about the people he’d taken today. It had been five for the day, no fights or fists to contend with. An easy day. All smiles and souls. And that was fine.

 _Dearest Cassie,_ Gabriel wrote. _I took five souls today and sent them to your desk and then, subsequently, to Chuck’s door. You spoke to each and every one. Chuck, then, spoke to them all. Each and every one. Remind me again why the fuck I have to write this report? That you’re going to hand to Chuck? I’ll never understand his insistence on these damn reports. There is nothing as consistent as Death, little brother._

Gabriel followed that up with a list of the souls he’d claimed, names and small descriptions of each person as required. Here was their name, the color of their soul, the ease in which said soul came free. Here were the only parts that mattered to Chuck. Here was all that mattered at all.

_See you tomorrow, bright and early,_

_Gabriel._

And he sealed the note in the envelope and scrawled Cas’s name on it in swirling cursive just as Cas appeared in the open doorway with a flutter of his dark wings.

“Hello Gabriel.”

“Cassie. Long time no see, bro. How’s heaven going today?”

“It’s fine, Gabriel. You were just there with Roger’s soul.”

“That was minutes ago. I know how you angels can start things, Cassie. You seem to forget our childhood.”

“I could never forget our childhood. You made sure of that,” Cas said, rolling his eyes. “Today’s report ready? I have business to attend to.”

Gabriel gestured to the envelope on the edge of the desk, each of them aware of how much easier it would have been for Gabriel just to hand it to him. Call Gabriel what you want, but easy wasn’t something that fit. Cas leaned over and scooped up the envelope with a sigh.

“You know I just need the report. The envelope is unnecessary.”

“I know. You say that every time. But I think the report is unnecessary so we’re both losers here.”

“And yet,” Cas said, gesturing to the envelope in his hand.

“And yet.” Gabriel grinned, spun around in his office chair, shrugging the grace cloak from his shoulders to fall around the back of the chair. “How’s tomorrow looking?”

“Should be light. Chuck’s got some personal claims he wants to make.”

“Who are they?” Gabriel asked. Chuck hardly ever did death jobs. Didn’t want to mess up his manicure.

Cas shrugged, and moved towards the door. “See you tomorrow with your list.”

“Sure, thing, little bro. I’ll be waiting.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Cas said, dry and monotone before disappearing, leaving Gabriel laughing into his empty room. Hearing his own laughter echoed back sent it falling into nothing. It felt scratchy against his skin, hitting his walls before coming back. It didn’t sit right. Too harsh, too sharp, against his white walls.

Gabriel sighed, turning back to his desk. In the drawer, he pulled out the sketchbook that sat on top of the stack, leather cover rubbed raw. Grabbing a pencil from the cup on his desk, Gabriel flipped through to the first empty page.

With the image of the first soul he held today dancing purple and light behind his eyes, Gabriel bent toward the page and started to sketch, covering his hand in soft, soft graphite.


	2. Chapter 2

Death didn’t sleep and morning crept slowly up the horizon outside the walls of his home. He spent it on the couch in the living room, switching between reading one of the books stored in the library on the first floor and flipping through the channels on the TV mounted on his wall. He used to cook when this whole gig was new, but then the food would end up in the trash untouched, stinking up the place as it rotted, and instead of having to take out the trash or snap it away, he sought out entertainment elsewhere.

His hair had dried from the shower he’d taken after sketching the souls from the day before. His hand was still smudged in graphite, though he found himself rubbing that spot of his hand to ground himself on tough days, and he’d slid into jeans and a soft t-shirt as the sun slunk into view. On the far wall, the windows that covered it turned orange as the sun grew fingers and pounded on them for entry. On the other side of the glass, the greenery growing inside shining as the sun hit it, spattered with flowers of purple and white. It was overgrown with weeds, Gabriel noticed, as he allowed himself to look beyond the windows for a moment. But the vines were growing up the glass walls, thriving and dark green and strong. It would survive the winter. It would survive his presence another day.

Gabriel didn’t let himself look long, fingers twitching towards the growth, and turned back to the TV. His nights were long, days longer still. Time moved strangely around him. It made room for him while he took souls in an instant that felt like hours. He could claim twenty souls and still have eight hours of night to fill with nothingness. Time or Chuck, really,  gave him a buffer for grieving, forgetting he was Death and needed no time to move on from the souls he took.

Cas appeared as the morning broke fully, clock ticking forwards in silence. He stood at the top of the staircase, turning to go down when he heard the TV. His footsteps were heavy, dress shoes thudding against the stairs and he emerged with a frown.“Gabriel. Your list.”

Gabriel took the list of jobs for the day from Cas with a grin. “Thanks, Cas. See you later.”

Cas was gone with a nod. Gabriel clicked off the TV with a snap, and was gone with another. There were four on his list. A light day yet again, and he snapped himself  to the first one landing on the doorstep of a ten-story apartment building reaching into the morning sky. Without bothering with his cloak, Gabriel sauntered into the apartment building, breezed up to the shining glass receptionist desk.

“Hi there!” A young woman greeted him, lime green blouse swallowing her, making her skin pale. Maybe if she had chosen something softer. Maybe if she smiled for real Gabriel would find her attractive. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Gabriel pasted on a grin, keeping his fists tucked as he leaned on the counter.

“Well hello there,” he said.

“What can I help you with?” she asked, eyebrows raised above blue eyes, clouded and dull.

Gabriel winced, letting a sheepish and artificial blush tint his cheeks. He scratched at the back of his neck. “See, I, uh, stayed the night with a woman that lives here two nights ago and I just realized I left something in her apartment. My inhaler. Silly me, always losing that damn thing.”

“Oh, I’ve got an inhaler too. I know the struggle.”

“Really? What are the chances?” Gabriel asked. Of course, he already knew that. It took only a glimpse at the way her lungs tightened too quickly, the soft wheezing he could hear scratching from her lips.

She peered up at him with a smile and then shook her head. “Unfortunately, I’m not supposed to give out resident’s information if you don’t have a name. Safety reasons, of course.”

“Right, of course I understand,” Gabriel turned to leave. He jerked his head up, as if he just remembered, and turned back to find her eyes on him. “Could it be Holly, possibly? Holly P, P…”

“Pilor?” she supplied. 

Gabriel snapped his fingers. “That’s it, Holly Pilor.”

“Fantastic, sir. She’s on the,” the woman paused to type into her computer, “fifth floor, room 521.”

Gabriel beamed at her. “Thank you so much! You don’t even understand how helpful this has been, what with the pollen count this time of year.”

“Of course! I know that all too well.” She waved to him as he turned away and he let his smile fall as he hit the button on the elevator. He could fly, but appearances and all. There were cameras everywhere and the security guards might not take too kindly to someone disappearing on them in the middle of the room.

The golden doors opened with a ding and in the reflection, Gabriel felt small without his wings. He hid them, tucked them in close and cloaked them with some grace from the people passing through the lobby around him. To them, he was just another man. To him, they were just a future job to do. They passed each other in equal disinterest and Gabriel rode the elevator to the fifth.

Inside, while his stomach dropped at the strange weight of gravity, he muttered to Chuck.  _ Next time give me the damn floor and room number asshole. I don’t have time for this shit _ . 

_ You’re just mad you had to lie to her, _ Chuck sent back. But, that wasn’t all true. Gabriel didn’t mind lying to the living. It was the dead he refused to lie to. They’d been lied to enough.

The elevator slowed and gravity crashed down on him harder, pressing him towards the floor. He preferred his wings to this strange attempt at touching the sky the humans devised. It didn’t feel so claustrophobic when he flew. So boxed in. If the humans knew what they were missing, they’d tear the world apart for wings to wear themselves. The sky would disappear in the chaos. 

When the doors slid open, Gabriel made his way through the maroon hallway to Holly’s apartment door. All it took was a whiff and he could follow the smell of death calling him to the soul asking to move on on the other side of the door. It was bitter, the smell of death. A bitter taste to appease his bitter heart. 

He didn’t bother knocking, the door swinging open with a touch of his fingertips. The world didn’t want a soul to rot. It would tear a hole in the earth as it died.

The room the door opened into was yellow, sunlight yellow. That mixed with the morning light streaming through the windowed doors leading to the balcony made the room blindingly bright. Gabriel had a headache in just one step, would have puked had he a stomach in two. There was yellow, and then there was this.

He moved through the room, resisting the urge to shield his eyes from the sheer attack the walls were laying siege to his eyeballs. From the stillness of the room, he could tell she wasn’t here in this high-ceilinged human attempt at capturing sunshine, and he moved to the open doorway at the opposite end of the room, glass door leading to a balcony. He paused in the open doorway, gentle wind brushing through his wings still tucked close to his back. He fluttered his wings a bit, letting the wind cool him down as he looked around the brick balcony.

Below his feet, a puddle pooled at his toes, coming from a watering can that lay on its side. He followed the water trail to find Holly slumped over against the brick ledge, long fingers still reaching for the handle. The plants crawling up the wall of her apartment started to shrivel in Gabriel’s presence and he sighed before stepping into the water, giving them room to breathe something other than Death’s scent. Holly’s soul was shining from the notch in her throat,  dull gray and thudding beneath her skin. How strange, then, that she drowned her world in yellow. 

Gabriel crouched down beside her, shoes soaking through with water, waiting for her soul to realize he was here. Come out, come out wherever you are. The big bad wolf was there to play. It didn’t take long. 

“Hello,” she said, frowning. Shadow of herself, soul in her shadow throat. 

“Hey,” Gabriel said, knees starting to ache as he crouched. “You ready to go?”

“Go?” She turned to the skyline where the sun peeked out from behind the other buildings reaching for the sky. 

Gabriel nodded, watching her as she looked down to take in the body she used to be. Waited for it to kick in before he had to explain it all. The script was boring and if he could avoid it, he would.

“Am I...dead?” she asked.

“‘Fraid so,” Gabriel shrugged. On a busier day, he wouldn’t indulge her conversation or her questions. But today he had a little bit of time. Plus, he worked so damn hard to get up here, might as well chat for a minute before leaving.

“What happened?” Holly asked. Gabriel frowned. He never asked why they died. Only went to fetch their souls. He looked at her, quivering and letting off the sharp smell of panic springing, and he sighed. It wouldn’t take but a moment to find out. He couldn’t do much, but he could do this.

Using just one fingertip, he touched her body gently where it lay and closed his eyes, searching. He let his grace, a thin stream, slide into her body, seeking out the place that called to him. Her chest, her heart. “Heart attack.”

“But,” she said, voice wavering, “my shoulder didn’t hurt.”

“I’m afraid the system’s failed you there. Women and men, their hearts don’t give out the same warning signs. You must have missed them.”

She said nothing, frowning down at the floor, soul in her throat settling into a steady vibration. Gabriel, slowly, let his wings unfold at his back until the took up the entirety of the wall, blocking the doorway and vine-covered brick. 

Death only had a handful of rules. With most, he couldn’t remember if they were passed on from the old Death or if he’d put it in place himself. It had been so long since those early days while he stumbled through his job. He had no orientation, had to figure it out as he went. One such rule was to always show them his wings. Or tried to. Sometimes they just weren’t looking.

Holly was, though. And her eyes widened, hand hovering over the shadow where her heart would be. 

“You’ve got wings.”

“I’m an angel,” Gabriel said, turning so they caught the light. She didn’t tear her eyes away, taking in the sea of gray, gray, gray that had overtaken his feathers. “What do you see?”

“Storm clouds,” Holly answered. She sighed, shadow hand finding her throat where the heart of her soul lived. “What happens next?”

“Take my hand and I’ll deliver you to the door of the big guy upstairs.”

“God?”

“Whatever you want to call him.”

“Okay,” she said and, in one smooth motion, slid her hand into Gabriel’s. This time, he didn’t take the elevator. Didn’t bother passing underneath the chandelier sparkling lobby. He snapped her to heaven and sat her on one of the cushioned seats outside Chuck’s door.

“Wait,” she called as he turned away. “Can I ask you to do something for me?”

Gabriel shook his head, a burst of guilt surging through his gut before he shoved it down, and he turned away. “Can’t.”

Another rule. No last wishes. See, Gabriel used to grant last wishes, in his younger and more trouble-prone years. He’d give each person anything they asked. But it drained him, his grace, and he’d spent his nighttimes whispering last words into the living’s dreams, turning off water faucets, and always, always trying to scrounge up scraps of more time. It almost lost him his wings. Metatron’s anger was not soft. And even Chuck’s, when he came back, was softer but still thunder-filled. 

So, he stopped. He said no. He did not lie, did not promise forever. Their time had run out and that was not his fault. Gabriel was just doing his job. A job that just happened to be one that people didn’t like. 

Job one done for the day. He went on to the next. 

When he arrived, asphalt sizzling beneath his feet, the glass was still in mid air, glitter in the afternoon sun. Two cars, hurtling, had collided. A twitch of the wrist too heavy to fix in time, eyes down for one second too long. It didn’t take much. Their windshields shattered in an instant and Death arrived in the middle while the glass sharpened itself, preparing to rain down. 

He could taste the blood in the air, the panic, the fear. He followed the scent of death to the car closest to him, the front end smashed in on itself. It was a small car, low to the ground. Easy to break in half. Toy cars met Chuck, and there was destruction left behind his shaking hands.

As the sun caught the glass falling to rest beneath his feet and the cars around the debris started to slow, craning to catch a glimpse of Death as they made their way to work, Gabriel stepped up to the window of the totaled car. There was a man in the driver’s seat, lost in the wreckage. His head lolled back against the seat, and when Gabriel arrived he blinked open, up at him. It was his soul that allowed for his eyes to open.

“Help,” he wheezed. 

Across town, the EMTs were loading their ambulance in a haze, hearts kicking into overdrive.

Across town, the police officer heading in the opposite direction paged his response, clicked on his lights, and flipped a U-turn as the traffic parted around him. 

Across town, sirens wailed up to the sky, asking the victims to hold on, hold on. Help was coming. 

But for Manny, it was help of a different kind that had arrived. Help with golden eyes and a cloak he cast around himself so the outsiders, the gawkers, the ones seeking sight of something they’d never seen before, wouldn’t see him at work. Manny could see him, though, wings and all.

“Manny Olsen?”

Manny in the car, all slow blinks and short breaths, shook his head sharp. “No. You’re Death.”

“That’s me,” Gabriel said, and began reaching into through the jagged car window. Manny’s soul was shining from somewhere deeper in the rubble of the accident, dark blue and emitting a soft light reflecting off the glass and metal. It came from beneath his seat belt, but there was too much in the way to see where it lived for sure. His legs or his back, his feet maybe. Gabriel couldn’t reach without climbing through the window and digging. Manny would have to give it willingly. “Can you hand me your soul?”

“What? No.” 

“Manny, listen to me. You will die if you don’t. That I’m here at all means that’s a fact. If you don’t hand me your soul, I will leave it here to rot forever. Nothing green grows from souls, my man.”

Manny sighed, breath shortening still more. There was blood running down a glass gash from his forehead, another on his chin. Gabriel looked around, still no sirens in sight. “Where’s it?” Manny whispered. 

Gabriel let his wings unfurl for Manny, stretching his grace to cover those too from the outside world. “Looks like this.”

“Like the sky?”

Gabriel shrugged, pointing down where he could see it glowing. “Whatever. Should be somewhere down there.”

Manny reached down to the back of his ankle, his achilles tendon, and came back with his soul in the palm of his hand. It was small, penny sized, shining dimly as it came into the daylight. He cupped it so gently, blood coating his fingers. “Goodbye,” he whispered, looking out the shattered window at nothing. “And I’m sorry.”

As he held out his soul, Gabriel took it in his hand and Manny’s shadow stepped from his body onto the asphalt beside him. He was taller than he looked, tucked and bent inside the car, and Gabriel had to look up to meet his shadow eyes. He wasn’t looking at Gabriel, though, but at the car a few feet away and in much the same condition as his own. Gabriel wasn’t called there, though Manny didn’t know that.

“Are you the devil?” Manny asked.

Gabriel shook his head with a snort. “No. I’m something of a different kind.”

“Am I going to Hell for what I’ve done?” His head was turned back on the scene of glass and blood, the sun sharp against it all. Gabriel wanted to shield his eyes. He didn’t.

“Not for me to decide. We’re going to meet the man who does, though.”

Manny turned back to Gabriel, meeting his eyes with an earnestness that had Gabriel’s chest tight. “Do you think I should?”

Gabriel, with the shouting from heaven decades ago ringing in his ears, his brothers shaking his world to pieces of glass like the pieces scattered below his feet, shrugged.  _ There is destruction in us all _ , he wanted to say.  _ Doesn’t mean we’ve got to burn for it _ . “Like I said, not for me to decide.”

He took Manny to Chuck’s door for his judgement, and left him for the next soul, Manny’s hands shaking in his shadow lap. 

His third job of the day landed him in the hospital with the man he still couldn’t place, two hallways from Ben’s room. The walls in this hall were painted like an aquarium, fish bright pops against the bright blue, bubbles floating to the top and frozen in the scene. Parents paced the hallways, bumping shoulders with Gabriel without a glance. He had half the invisible cloak on; Eyes slid past him without registering his presence at all.

Taking a breath more for the relief he thought it might bring from the tension that struck him on the threshold to the room than for oxygen he didn’t need, Gabriel hesitated outside the door. On the bed was a child, golden pigtails limp and dusting her bony shoulders. Beside her, her parents held her hands in their own, tears soft on their cheeks. Gabriel could hear their path, carving rivers into their faces. There they would remain forever. Water left invisible scars, grief too. The doctors had told them she hadn’t long now. Sometimes, there was nothing they could do. 

The mother beside the girl was whispering her goodbyes, and Gabriel turned around to move past the room. He’d give them their moment, but only the one. Instead, he peeked into Ben’s room to find the teacher from before sat at his bedside once again. Gabriel cloaked himself all the way and tiptoed to the windowsill to sit and listen for a moment. For a sign of the boy’s fate. For a clue of the man that struck him so familiar. 

“I did my Creative Writing assignment last night,” Ben was saying. “Can I read it out loud?”

“Sure. Why don’t I record it for the next club meeting? I’m sure they’d love to see you.”

Ben frowned at that, curled in on himself on the bed. “Just my voice?”

“Sure,” his teacher nodded. “Just your voice is great.”

From the pocket of his khaki pants, he pulled out his phone and set to record. He shrugged off the leather jacket from before, stinking of motor oil and threaded with wind, and he draped it over the back of the chair. He gestured to Ben then, hitting record, and Ben started to read into the room. It felt as if a stillness had fallen around the room, but maybe it was just Gabriel. He leaned in unconsciously, hearing his name fall from Ben’s lips.

“Dear Mr. Death,” Ben started, ignoring the way his teacher stilled at his side, “I know you are near. I won’t pretend I don’t. Are you listening, waiting until my heart sounds like yours? Does your touch hurt like I think it will? As your fingers wrap around my life, will I be able to feel it? 

I’ve found out today that you are coming faster than I had planned. I’m sorry I never thought to talk to you before your arrival was announced. I bet that’s how it is every time. You must be so lonely, Mr. Death. 

I’m not writing this to beg you not to come. From the closed doors and sad eyes, I can tell this isn’t something I can escape. There’s something about my mother’s hand that feels so much softer now. Is it wrong to want to hold it always now? To want to say I love you to everything? Maybe I’ll be the only one to say I love you to the ceiling above this room, to the tile second from the wall, and my words will carve my legacy there to exist forever.

All I ask is for an easy death. A death like laughter. Can you do that for me? I am scared. I can admit that. And let me be holding my mother’s hand. That’s all I ask. All I want now. You have crept into my blood, please don’t bring the pain to my heart.” 

The man’s choked breath cut Ben off there, but he finished in a whisper anyway. “Yours soon, Ben”

Still perched on the windowsill, Gabriel knew he’d stayed too long. Listened to too much that was not for his own taking despite his name scrawled at the top of the page. This was for Ben and his grief and for the people his life had touched. This was not for his ears at all.

Before the teacher could reply, Gabriel brushed past him, heading into the little girl’s room to find her parents silently clutching her hands.  _ She is not an anchor _ , Gabriel wanted to scream.  _ Don’t let her death tear you from the world _ . But it would for a while and he could do nothing to help them. 

The girl lay still, eyes closed, drifting closer to him and aware of it too. Her soul slid from behind her ear to her fingertips, touched her mother’s hand one more time, and met Gabriel halfway across the room. There were some that needed Death to come, and she took his hand before he needed to ask. 

“Hi,” he said, once he’d taken her from her body. “What’s your name?”

“Remy,” she replied voice swollen and much too big for the body on the bed. She filled the room with it.

“Hi, Remy. I’m Gabriel,” he replied. Her hair was still tied into pigtails in her shadow form. They bounced as she turned her head back towards the bed and Gabriel thought they’d sound like wind chimes if they had a sound.

“I want to go home,” she whispered, shrinking back from Gabriel where he towered over her in the middle of the room. 

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but that’s a no go. We can go somewhere cooler, though. How’s that sound?”

“Where?” 

“My home. It’s got anything you could ever want there. There’s gardens for miles and a lake to dive into and stars so bright they dance behind your eyelids,” Gabriel said. He looked down on her as she thought this over.

“Do I have to?” she asked. Gabriel nodded. Her shadow fingers reached out to clasp his hand in hers again where it rested at his side. “Can I hold your hand, then? Please.”

Gabriel didn’t have a chance to say no before a little hand clutching his own. He sighed, bending down to her level. As he did, she relaxed, shoulders sighing into place. 

“Can I tell you something?” Remy nodded, pigtails bobbing. “We’re going to fly there.”

“Fly?” she asked. “I hate airplanes.”

“No, not on a plane. With these,” Gabriel said and he gently, ever so gently, let his wings come free from his back. She hadn’t noticed them before, but now it was all she could see.

As she giggled, her soul shone bright purple streaking her whole body. “You’re silly.”

“Never heard that one before,” Gabriel muttered. He looked at her and squeezed her hand. “Okay sweetpea, let’s get you home.”

Hand in hand, Gabriel led her to Chuck’s door, escorting her personally into his office where he waited with a bowl of candy and a smile. They did that with children, though sometimes it seemed the adults needed it more. Remy charged in with a stern face and Gabriel chuckled as he left. Yeah, the adults needed it more. No doubt about it.

Gabriel snapped back to the hospital hallway just as her machines started to blare their panic through the room and he cursed himself for being careless. He’d focused on the wrong location on the list, had snapped to the death he’d already doled. Sighing, he ducked from the doorway, half-hidden, and turned down the hallway towards the elevators. As he hit the button, he felt eyes on his back. It was a tingle down his spine, a sinking in his gut. Turning around, he found Ben’s teacher, towering over the mayhem in the hallway and the only one noticing his retreat at all. 

“Hey,” the man called. “Hey!”

Gabriel locked eyes with him above the bodies, gold eyes meeting hazel atop their heads. The man started towards Gabriel, reaching out his hand despite the hallway between them, and Gabriel stepped back into the open elevator just as the doors started to slide closed. He plastered a grin on his face and sent the teacher a wink as they shut and sent him hurtling down, down, down. He rode it in silence, all the while wondering how the hell the teacher man had managed to get eyes on Gabriel at all. 

His last soul of the day was a simple one, and he retired home early enough to find himself with too many hours to fill. He’d written his report already and waited for Cas to show his feathery ass, pacing all the while. There was something about that man that caught Gabriel, something that made his stomach drop. He had seen his soul before, but where? And how had he escaped, if Gabriel had seenit? Is that why he could see Gabriel? Because they’d met a time before? Gabriel didn’t have any answers and it made him want to tear his hair out.

Gabriel had heard the teacher’s heartbeat, felt his sadness and his panic in waves. He was human still and hadn’t been anything but human before. He’d be able to tell if the story said otherwise. So why could he see Gabriel at all? Nothing added up, and while Gabriel wasn’t the best at math this wasn’t a complex equation. Death plus anyone equaled dead. Simple as that.

When Cas arrived with his usual stiff silence, Gabriel handed over his report, sealed in an envelope with a wink. As his brother turned to go, Gabriel paused.

“Hey, Cas?”

“Gabriel.”

“Can I ask you something weird?”

“I suppose so. Is something wrong?” Cas tilted his head, waiting. Most likely bracing himself for whatever stupid shit Gabriel had managed to get himself into this time.

“There anyone you can think of off the top of your head, tall, like 6’4” tall, hazel green eyes, long brown hair, some sort of teacher?” Gabriel asked, feigning, terribly, nonchalance. 

Cas shrugged. “That’s not very much information to work with, Gabriel.”

“What if I said I may have...touched their soul before?”

“And not taken it to Chuck?” Cas frowned at the ground, thinking. It only took a moment before his head shot up, recognition dawning on his face. But Gabriel didn’t need him to explain. He already knew what he’d say. The boy in the ocean all those years ago. It came to him, too, just as he said it.

“Don’t you remember what happened?” Cas asked. Of course he did. Of course.

“How could I forget the thunder that day?” Gabriel said. Gabriel shoed him away and Cas left with questions still on his tongue. Without a moment’s hesitation, Gabriel hurried from his office, down the staircase, and into the library on the ground floor, tucked beneath the staircase.

The room was painted gray, shelves white and touching the ceiling, overflowing with books. All of them had brushed hands with Death and all of them lived to tell their tales. It was the way of things. Books, stories, always beat him and he had to be okay with that. Something had to last.

But in the back corner, on the bottom most shelf, Gabriel stored his sketch books from the beginning. From years and years ago. There were dozens of them, spilling with sketches of souls. The souls, they’d started to eat him alive, until he’d tried once to sketch them and the weight lifted from his shoulders. They were begging to be put into some form of permanence and Gabriel tried his best to comply.

He grabbed the few surrounding the year he could vaguely pinpoint on that day of salt and sun. It didn’t take long to find her soul, the mother of the boy now a man. All it took was finding the hazy, incomplete outline of the man’s soul first from years ago and flip back a few pages. It was only a little while after he’d claimed her, when it happened. 

Gabriel tore the page from his sketchbook, her soul gentle green and streaked with white, swirling and sharp, jumping from the paper, and he went back upstairs for the night.


	3. Chapter 3

The beach had been softly warm, that day, though Gabriel rarely took note of the weather. There had been no wind to brush his feathers, only sun and heat hanging over the ocean. On the splintered pier, reaching out into the sea, he stood on the edge, toes dangling, and watched the boy navigate the shore. He’d made Gabriel’s tiptoe list, stuck between no and yes for the day, and so Gabriel waited in his empty hours for the boy to make a decision. Or Chuck. He never could tell who made the last straw fall into place. As of now, he could only see a faint shimmer of the boy’s soul, and knew the decision had not yet been made.

On the shore, the boy with the floppy brown hair, sweatshirt clad and still, stared into the ocean. The waves lapped at his feet, soaking through the hem of his jeans. He hardly seemed to notice the cold of the water sinking through to his skin. Behind him, his father sat staring at nothing. Gabriel could taste his grief for miles, hanging heavy with the heat. 

The boy whispered to himself, to his father, to the water he stood on the edge of.  _ “ _ I can hear her calling me home.”

He started to walk into the water, hoping for warm arms to catch him once he was underneath the surface of the dark blue waves. She had called to him, the ocean. Had said  _ child, I will wrap you in my warmth forever and together we’ll float beneath the stars and moon and sky _ but as he submerged himself, she asked for more.  _ Give me your lungs, the ocean needs to breathe, give me your heart, I don’t have one of my own. _ But Mother Ocean had lied. She wanted souls and so she consumed them, all of them who could hear her call. 

“Sam!” The  boy’s father called from the shore, watching his son disappeared beneath the water. He raced into the waves, forcing himself through the pull and crash she threw at him.

Beneath the water, the boy’s soul started to shine as he fought towards the surface, realizing it was not the mother he was missing there in the water. His soul was golden, bright, Gabriel could feel heat coming off of it, brushing his face. It wasn’t the harsh heat of the sun, though, but soft, gentle. Campfire flames cloaked in ghost stories. Body heat beneath the winter night. He lit the water aflame, Sam did, and Gabriel couldn’t bring himself to do what he knew he should. 

Sam grew talons, fighting to escape the water he wasn’t meant to exist in, and the water fought back slipping into the cracks of his panic, through his nose, the spaces between his bared teeth. Gabriel grew a heart out of the wreckage he had left in his chest and let his wings unfurl in the sunlight, still invisible to the outside world. He lept, flapped them twice, hovering above the crashing, thrashing of the water. He circled, muttering to himself at just how much trouble he was going to get into as he dove and reached in for the boy whose soul was brighter than the sun. He’d have hell to pay for this, thunder to ride out, but it didn’t matter. He’d had hell to pay many a time before and never had he felt a heart sprout like it had feeling that boy’s beauty, his panic, his sadness.

Beneath Gabriel’s hands, the boy struggled more. He had already started sinking down, lungs screaming for air. Had the ocean grown hands? Was this how he’d find himself walking the ocean floor? But, Gabriel persisted, lifted him by his shoulder, feeling the boy’s soul under his hands start to shiver. Death was there and Gabriel didn’t know how to tell Sam’s soul that he was not here to take it to heaven. Not here. Not today. 

“It’s okay,” Gabriel thought into the water around him. He could try to speak, the water unable to claim him though it may try. He had no heart to give. Or, he shouldn’t have one. The ache for the boy, the reason for his rebellion, was something new. Something that might have been a heart before it turned black. Plus, Sam wouldn’t be able to hear him anyway. So, he thought into the water and hoped it would make it through somehow. “I’m here to help.”

It seemed to work. Sam stopped clawing at Gabriel’s arms where they wrapped around his chest and his soul stopped shivering with such vibrating intensity. Gabriel lifted Sam with a flap of his wings through the water, bringing him above the surface, hearing him gasp air back into the lungs the ocean had tried to steal from him to grow life inside. He hovered there, waiting for someone to come save Sam from the water. He couldn’t carry him to shore, it would give away more than he could. The rules had already been tossed aside for a moment, he couldn’t reveal himself too.

So, with salt-water lapping at his skin, Gabriel held Sam just high enough to gasp in air while the boy’s father called for help from the lifeguard tower down the beach. Held Sam while the lifeguards tore through the sand and waded out to get him. He’d drifted far in his struggle. The ocean was greedy and she’d wanted his soul before the day was done. Gabriel held Sam, not letting go until the lifeguards took over and swam him to shore where his father’s fists tightened at his sides. 

There was only so much he could do. They all grieved differently. 

Back home, Chuck was waiting with thunder in his breath. It was worse than his brothers, but, Gabriel thought of the soul in that boy, and could only smile to himself. 

* * *

Two days and a handful of souls later, Gabriel found himself in that very same hospital once again. Chuck told Cas to tell Gabriel to stop in on Ben again and give a full-length report. Which meant an all day hang around. Which meant extreme boredom, watching a boy chained to his bed by an IV in his arm. So, he brought his notebook along and sat against the windowsill in his cloaked glory while the sun rose for the day.

Ben was asleep, lightly, while his mother curled around him in the bed, her dark hair spilling over the blue pillows he slept on. She was dressed already, but from the noise Gabriel could hear her dreaming. The nurses didn’t say anything even as they turned their heads to look in through the doorway on the sleeping pair. One even smiled as he took in the sight and kept moving, plastic bin tucked under his arms.

Gabriel turned away and sketched the souls from the day before into his sketchbook where he was supposed to be jotting down notes. What could he say now, though? That the boy’s mother feared he’d die in his sleep and so she crammed herself against his heart so she’d feel it if, when, it happened? That the nurses had seen this happen enough that all they did was move on with their mornings with footsteps quieter around the pair? Those were not the things Chuck wanted to hear. 

He wanted pain levels, contribution, wanted  _ this human is necessary to keep this many humans alive and safe and happy _ . Wanted  _ this human could disappear and no one would notice _ . Chuck did well with the planning, but he forgot about how human the humans were. How they touched each other’s lives, embedded themselves into other people. Chuck wanted to know just how many people would feel a person's death, if the cards didn’t fall one way or the other. Most of the time, though, he did it based on pain. If the person was suffering, they’d be more likely to get moved to yes. Death was not a moment but a process, a lifetime in the making. There was hardly a thing he could do to change that.

This is what Chuck did when he wasn’t sure which way to go. He sent Gabriel and asked for his opinion. After Gabriel fished a coin out of his pocket to flip and let the ‘fates’ decide, Chuck changed his rules, required ‘cited evidence’ to swing each way. And Gabriel, knowing that heaven was soft and stable again, did as he was told with only mild grumbling. Chuck hardly asked for much, usually leaving Gabriel to do his job as he pleased. He could suffer for a day to keep it so.

Gabriel found his mind wandering to Ben’s letter. It was not the first time he’d been written. But, usually it was the ones left behind that wrote to him. The ones asking for the souls he’d already touched and taken. What was it about grief that called people to their pens? To their words? Gabriel could hear them, if he wanted to. All the prayers, all the tears.

But, there was not much he could do. If he could write them all, they’d have mountains of words to soothe them, to trick them. He could write,  _ the Earth is a graveyard, the sky, the ocean _ , could write,  _ all of the stars are dead,  _ or,  _ sometimes I am sorry, sometimes I am not, _ could write,  _ I can see your souls through your skin, save your lies for ears that are not mine.  _ Could write,  _ there is beauty in each of you, I’m sorry I can’t help but touch _ . Death could write, but he would not write lies. He would not write at all.

So, he shut their words off from drifting to his ears from across the planet and instead thought of Ben’s letter and the way he was still so very alive curled into his hospital bed. 

_ Dear Ben, _ Gabriel started, half out of boredom and half out of the fact the boy's words were still ringing in his head. But, he didn't know what to say. There were words he could not find to soothe the boy into his arms. He knew he was dying, wasn’t that soothing enough? A moment to prepare, thousands of them, too. 

He hovered, pencil over paper, for what felt like hours. But the sun crept slowly, the buildings outside the window taller than the horizon and making it stretch to touch them through the window, wrapping around edges and glinting to reach for Gabriel in the windowsill and Ben in his bed. She did. She did. And she tried to burn the color from the world as she did. What a bitch the sun was, needing to be the brightest thing on Earth. Didn’t she know she wasn’t on Earth? Didn’t she know the flowers trusted her, and still she burnt them to a crisp in the summer heat? Some things just had too much power for trust.

Movement startled him from the window, soft rustling, and Gabriel turned to watch as Ben’s mother slid from the bed, pressed a kiss to her son’s forehead as her soul started to glow from her hands, and got ready in the bathroom attached to his room. She wiped herself down with a wipe she pulled from her purse, her makeup collection following. It wasn’t much and Gabriel had a feeling she had sacrificed most of it in her commute for her son in the other room. Her soul was softly gray, pointed at the edges, protecting her hands. She could handle a fight, she’d tear her opponent to pieces and drown them in her darkness. But she’d also soften her edges, lull her son to sleep with her gray fingers, fix his bruises as best she could. She’d leave traces of her soul on the things she touched and wind up with nothing in the end. She wouldn’t care one bit. 

She left for work down the hall just as Ben was blinking awake at the movement and the sun. “Bye mom.”

“Bye honey. Go back to sleep if you can.” She blew him a kiss tinged with her soul and he smiled as it sank into the skin of his cheek. But he didn’t go back to sleep. He pulled out his folder of paper along with his notebook from the drawer in the table beside his bed and, while the nurses hovered and poked, checked his vitals and fed him medicine that would only soften his pain, he read the poetry his teacher had left behind for him aloud. 

The nurses stopped to listen at his door, their hands no longer whirlwinds as they worked. The eye of the hurricane brought by a boy and his lilting, gentle words. Gabriel stopped his hovering pencil too, as Ben read something about soldiers. Something about fragging. Something about five men drawing straws and one marrying a grenade to his body and letting the pin fly. Gabriel felt like that, too, married to a grenade just asking to be set off. He wasn’t the one that’d get hurt in the aftermath, though. 

When Ben finished the poem, the group scattered with smiles on their faces, their days brighter for Ben’s words, hurricane back in their breath and their hands. They had destruction to combat with their own brand of it. 

In his report, Gabriel wrote about how words woke Ben up. How his mother left traces of her soul on him each morning. How even in the last few days, Ben seemed to be shrinking. How his smile wasn’t. 

This wasn’t what Chuck was looking for, but if he’d wanted perfection he shouldn’t have sent Gabriel. Sometimes, Gabriel wanted to remind Chuck of the humanity in the humans he’d created. Other times, not so much. Ben was one of the former, thrumming with good with a capital G. Some days, flipping the kill button just didn’t sit right on his shoulders.

Ben went back to his homework, scribbling notes into the corner of his paper, while Gabriel took real notes. Notes about his bones reaching for the light from beneath his thinning skin. Notes about his fingers shaking as he wrote. Notes about the veins Gabriel could see create a roadmap across Ben’s skin from beneath the clothes he’d chosen to change into. This is how you get to my heart, they said. Gabriel pretended not to see. It was not an invitation. Not for him, not now.

An hour later, Sam came walking in. Gabriel caught him, the smell that he seemed to carry from even childhood, one tinged in sadness and sunshine, as he got off the elevators. Something made Gabriel itch to move from the window, move from the room and the hospital and the state. Instead, he stayed. Instead, Mary’s soul grew heavy in his pocket and he started to scribble a response to Ben on the page in front of him.

_ Dear Ben, _ he wrote again.  _ I thank you for your letter. I can assure you that my fingers are not heavy. It will not hurt unless you make it so. Sorry to put it so bluntly, but I won’t lie to you. Know that. Know that.  _

_ Is there anything else I can answer for you, before your time runs out? I don’t often do this, so think carefully. Don’t waste your chance. I’ll be around.  _

_ Yours and everyone else’s, _

_ Gabriel _ he paused, striking through his name.  _ Death. _

He tore the page from the notebook as Sam entered the room. Gone was the buttoned t-shirt and dress pants he wore to work and in their place was a pair of jeans softened with wear and a t-shirt worn thin, decorated with some band Gabriel hadn’t heard of but probably had heard. Music was something that sought him out, not the other way around. On top, he had his signature leather jacket, black riding boots strapped to his calves. Gabriel could smell motor oil, could smell the wind that had sunk into his skin as he rode here. If he looked, Gabriel knew there’d be a motorcycle parked somewhere in the lot that had Sam’s fingerprints all over it.

Sam sank into the seat beside Ben. “Hey Ben. How’s the world today?”

Ben shrugged. “Ending, I think.”

“What’d the doctors say?” Sam asked.

Ben didn’t respond. Instead turned to look out the window through the middle of Gabriel’s chest. Gabriel didn’t know what they’d said, but it couldn’t have been good. Sam picked up on that too and didn’t ask any more questions. Instead he pulled out another book from the inside of his jacket, hand-sized and worn thin. Ben continued to work on his homework while Sam read quietly beside him, and the sun reached its peak in the sky in the middle of their gentle silence.

After an hour, Ben set his things aside and started to doze in his bed, ignoring Sam’s worried glances from beside him.

It was strange, the way Gabriel wanted to touch both of them so badly while watching them in their silent comfortableness. Being around souls, these two in particular, made him want to touch and touch and touch. It was why he found a house miles and miles away from a single soul and shut the doors tight. It was why he was only allowed to see those who he was supposed to touch. 

He found himself standing, stepping forward. His hand acting of it’s own accord, started to reach out, to reach and reach. How long had it been since he let himself touch skin without the intention to kill? Eternities and eternities.

Just as his hand hovered over Ben’s skin, close enough to feel the heat coming off it, the alarms on his machines went blaring. Gabriel jerked back, struck by what he’d almost done. He was too close, inches away. Ben had breathed in what he was. He’d crossed the line and as Sam stood, Gabriel staggered back to the window. From his pocket, he pulled the sketch of Mary’s soul and the letter to Ben, folding them together and leaving them there in the sunlight. He scribbled  _ I’m sorry _ on top of the letter and brushed past Sam on his way out the door, sending shivers up his arms and a chill into his skin. It’s what he left behind. Always and forever.

It was time to go. Time to flee. Death was not allowed to touch before their time was up and that’s why he didn’t spend time with humans. His touch was that of Midas but everything instead turned to ash.

Gabriel didn’t know he’d touched Sam too closely on his way out. Didn’t know Sam could see him fleeing from the room this time too. Didn’t know Sam could see his wings, golden and fluttering behind him as he rushed from the hall. Didn’t know Sam’s breath caught, once the nurses had settled and Ben was okay, on the paper left in the windowsill that hadn’t been there before.

He handed the letter to Ben in silence and said his goodbyes, Mary’s soul tucked into his back pocket. He didn’t know why, but he dreamt of his mother that night, her skin shining the grass green color of the swirling circle on the paper.

* * *

Cas was waiting for him by the time he snapped back home, sitting on the couch stiff as a board. Gabriel sighed. He’d known this would happen. At least it was just Cas and not Chuck himself. If it had been his father, he’d spend weeks rebuilding the walls of his home, the furniture, every last piece.

“Gabriel,” Cas started from the couch in the living room.

“I crossed a line, I know, I know.”

“Why would you do that?”

Gabriel shrugged. How could he tell Cas the way they looked so soft? That it had been too long since he was allowed to touch freely? Cas could touch. Did touch sometimes, healing people in his wake. He wouldn’t understand the value of any of it. Instead Gabriel said nothing and glared at his brother from across the room, pretending not to be drowning inside his desperation and loneliness. He kicked off his boots and shed his grace cloak, let his wings unfurl and stretch out.

Cas frowned at his nonchalance. There were lives on the line.

“There are always lives on the line,” Gabriel said before Cas could. “I am Death, after all.”

Cas sighed, looking past Gabriel through the glass walls and into the greenhouse overgrown with weeds. “Did you at least get the report done?”

Gabriel handed it over. “I think he’s forgotten that I can’t touch and being around so many humans makes it difficult not to. Maybe next time he’ll think twice about sending me.”

Cas’s head jerked back to Gabriel at that. “You mean to say you did this on purpose? So you wouldn’t have to do these again?”

_ No, _ Gabriel wanted to say.  _ I would not do that to another soul. _ But, instead he shrugged. If that’s how Cas saw him, his words would change nothing. 

It hurt, though. His words were knives and Gabriel wished he could bleed again, to show Cas what he’d done to him. Cas disappeared after a moment in the tense silence and Gabriel buried his face in his hands. The world saw him like Cas did, and it hurt to know. It hurt to know.

The sun was setting and with it, the stars emerged. Gabriel moped around his room beneath them, sketching the pieces of Ben’s mother’s soul he’d seen, images of her giving it away in the kisses she blew into the air, images of her leaving traces against her son’s skin. There were people in this world that did not know the power their souls had. She, clearly, did not know what she carried in her fingers.

He could not warn her not to touch people who did not deserve it. He wanted to, though, he wanted to.

As the night passed, words drifted to his ears.  _ Dear Death _ they said,  _ Dear Death _ . And, with one voice across the world sounding so very familiar, he, for the guilt eating him alive, listened.  _ Dear Death, I saw you today. I’ve seen you before. But, that’s beside the point. My name’s Sam Winchester and I’d like to make a deal. _


	4. Chapter 4

Gabriel had taken deals before. When he was bored, when the world got too silent around him, when the deal offerer had an air of arrogance that he wanted to tear down. Two of the three fit the situation. Sam’s voice had never been anything but soft and kind. 

He spent the rest of the night mulling it over. Should he let the man into his home? Into his life? Would he be able to touch the soul he couldn’t bring himself to all those years ago? Gabriel reasoned that he could. It had been years after all, and his heart or shadow of one was long since gone. 

When Cas came in the morning, he was silent, eyes on the floor. He had an apology written all over his face and Gabriel shook it off before he could say it out loud. “It’s fine. We all say dumb shit.”

“I know you didn’t do it on purpose. I was just worried. You know what happens when you break the rules.” 

“I know, Cassie. It’s fine. Need a favor though,” Gabriel said.

“What is it?”

“Write me up one of them contracts. Two weeks. Chuck as a backup.”

Cas’s eyebrows shot up. “You haven’t had a deal in a while. Who is the offerer?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Sam Winchester.”

Cas narrowed his eyes from across the office room. “Gabriel, after what happened before I’m not sure that’s wise.”

“Cas, that was years ago. Decades. I’ve got everything in check. My head’s screwed on straight.”

Cas frowned as the sun slid into his eyeline through the office window. They both were thinking about the day before, the rest of his mistakes pooling and ready to call forward. “Chuck won’t like it.”

“That’s why he’s backup. If shit hits the fan he’s got the power to stop it. Stop me.” Cas opened his mouth to argue further. “Cas, trust me. I got this. It’s me. Death, hello.”

Cas rolled his eyes before nodding his assent. “I’ll bring it tonight when I come to get the report. Are there any changes to the usual you’d like to add?”

“No, no. The usual’s good. Two weeks, no running.”

“If you insist.” 

“I do. See you later, Cassie.”

They parted ways at the top of the staircase, Gabriel with his list of souls for the day and Cas disappearing into thin air. 

Gabriel’s jobs were nothing out of the ordinary. No major catastrophes he had to clean up with his hands. It was all hospitals and elderly homes, the expected and the ready.

He held the soul of a young woman in a hospital in Japan, soul softly pink and rounded edges. She smiled at him as he left her at Chuck’s door, thanking him for ending her suffering. 

He held the soul of a man pushing ninety with a gruffness of his soul that only came with a century of wear and tear and lots and lots of children. They had all already come, grandchildren in tow, to say goodbye. He gave his brick red soul willingly and followed Gabriel in silence. Gabriel pretended not to notice the tear slipping from his eye. 

Gabriel held the soul of a girl, shivering in an alleyway. Her soul was freezing when she offered it and Gabriel pretended not to hear her ask for just five more minutes. What would you do with them, he wanted to ask. What would five minutes change? Nothing. He’d still be standing there at the end. Not even wings would get her far enough to outrun time.

Another was the wife of a man he’d taken earlier in the week, two years younger but still wrinkled and ready. That happened a lot, couples going one after the other. They built worlds into each other and lost everything when he arrived to take half. It was one of the only times he hoped Chuck let them find each other in heaven. He never did ask if it happened, though. At the door, she ran her shadow hand over his cheek and patted him, once, twice, soft. Then turned on her heel and met Chuck head on. He grinned at the glint of steel in her eye and went back home.

Souls dealt with and report written, Gabriel started a letter to Sam.  _ Dear Sam, I heard your offer. Attached is a contract for the deal you proposed last night. I don’t know if you meant it, or if it was a dream of yours. A nightmare really. If so, ignore this. If not, read it carefully. There is no going back once you accept. If you have any questions, pray them my way and I’ll find you. Feel free to edit the contract as you please, but know I’ll be looking over it before I sign it too. Tricks only work on the Devil and I am not him. _

_ Yours and everyone else’s, _

_ Death _

Cas appeared right on time, contract in hand, and they traded papers with muttered formalities. Before Cas was even gone Gabriel snapped himself to the hospital to catch Sam before he left. Ben’s room was empty of anyone beside him, but Sam’s smell lingered so Gabriel hurried down the hallway to find the elevator doors just closing on Sam. Sam caught his eye, Gabriel having tucked his wings in and gone incognito, and lunged to stop the doors from closing. He began to walk towards Gabriel, elevators forgotten, and Gabriel turned away with a grin. This was going to be fun. 

He tore down the hallway, knowing Sam would follow, around the corner. He didn’t run, too many people would notice him if he did. But he hurried down the hallway, hearing every step of Sam’s riding boots echo against the tile behind him and gaining ground with his long, long legs the whole way. Laughing to himself, Gabriel turned the last corner, opened the door into the closest janitor’s closet and waited. He knew Sam would follow. He did. Before the door latched all the way behind Gabriel, Sam yanked it open and stepped inside. 

He was breathing hard, heart pounding loud enough to echo through the room while he leaned against the shelves of paper towels they hospital stored inside. He froze, then, remembering who he was with. He had turned his back on Death because he had forgotten, and whipped around to right that.

Gabriel, still grinning, started to speak. “Sam Winchester, you are cordially invited to throw your life away in exchange for little Ben’s down yonder and spend the next two weeks trying to defy me.”

“What I-”

Gabriel shoved the papers into Sam’s hands and watched his eyes roam over the letter first and then flip to start on the contract. “Well, I’m off.”

Gabriel could hear footsteps nearing the door, accompanied by wheels squeaking with each turn. He snapped himself to the other side of the door, stepping back until his back and wings pressed against the opposite wall, invisible as the janitor opened the door to find Sam standing, frozen, inside.

“Sir, you can’t be in here. How did you even get the door open?” The janitor held up her ID card she had used to unlock the door in between her first two fingers.

“Oh, my, uh, friend-” Sam turned around to find Gabriel no longer standing at his back. His confusion and the stammered apology with a blush staining his cheeks had Gabriel choking down his laughter. 

_ Really funny, _ Sam snarled in the form of a prayer. Gabriel let his laughter find Sam’s ears, let it fill his head with Gabriel’s cackling. 

_ You’re an asshole,  _ Sam said. Gabriel focused in on Sam, could hear the crunch of gravel beneath his feet as he walked to wherever he’d parked his cycle. Heard him jingle his keys from his pocket, heard the engine rumble.

_ I’m Death of course I’m an asshole, _ Gabriel replied.  _ Got any questions for me? _

_ Haven’t read the whole thing yet. Kinda got interrupted. _

_ Maybe you shouldn’ta been where you weren’t supposed to be,  _ Gabriel said.

Sam’s sigh had Gabriel cackling again as he sauntered down the hospital hallway before snapping back home. This really was going to be fun.

* * *

All the rest of the night he got questions from Sam. The usual deal was simple. For two weeks, the person asking to trade places with another had to be Gabriel’s assistant. In those two weeks, if Gabriel could find their whole soul and either touch it or prove he could, then he decided who died. If Gabriel couldn’t find their soul  _ and  _ the individual made it through the two weeks without quitting or refusing to do as Gabriel asked, they could take the place of the person in death and knock on Chuck’s door themselves.

_ What do you mean find my soul? _ Sam asked, his twentieth question in the last ten minutes.

_ Where are you right now?  _ Gabriel sighed, set aside his sketchbook once again line smeared across the page jagged and messy.

_ Home, why? _

_ Where’s home? It’ll be easier to explain in person. _

_ Do you need the address or do I just picture where I am? _

_ I’m Death, not magic. The address please. _

Sam sent him his address and Gabriel appeared on the doorstep of an apartment complex a few stories high, gate around the entire lot. The gray brick walls looked new, doors painted bright pops of color. Red, yellow, purple. He passed them as he approached the room number Sam sent along, and knocked twice on the navy blue door to Sam’s second-story apartment. Around him, the world was softening, falling asleep, going quiet. Sam’s footsteps came closer, bare against the carpeted floor.

Turning to look around as Sam came to the door on the other side, Gabriel could see the hospital in the near distance and he knew now why Sam had offered to bring Ben his homework, why he showed up every day.

“Hey,” Sam said, hand scratching at the back of his neck as he opened the door for Gabriel to come in.

“Hey,” Gabriel said, walking into a room that looked a lot like his own. Not in size, but in the blankness of it all. The counters were bare, the walls a plain eggshell white. He had books, though, stacked up on the end table, covering the entertainment center’s compartments around his TV. Gabriel took it all in and thought that maybe the lack of distance wasn’t the only reason Sam spent his nights at Ben’s bedside. 

Sam hovered by the door and Gabriel stopped himself from rolling his eyes at his tense shoulders. Instead, he flopped onto the couch and threw his arm over the back of it. “So, what do you got for me?”

“Oh I uh, wrote them down. Hang on.” Sam disappeared through the doorway to his bedroom and Gabriel listened to the way his heartbeat settled in his chest.

“Do you want a water or anything?” Sam asked, coming back into the room. Gabriel’s empty refrigerator flashed through his mind and he made a mental note to fix that if Sam took the deal. He nodded anyway. Maybe if he played human Sam would chill the fuck out.

Sam came back with two glasses of ice water in his shaking hands, water sloshing up the sides. He set them down, sinking into the armchair furthest from Gabriel before clasping his hands in his lap. 

“Thanks,” Gabriel said, sipping at the cold, tasteless liquid. “So?” 

“Oh right. Okay. First thing’s first, I’d like to hear what’s going to happen from you.”

“Sure. You agree and you’re my assistant for two weeks. Simple as that. You live at my house. You go to work with me. In that time, you must take at least one soul, but I guarantee I’ll ask you to do more than that. If you refuse or fail, I send you back home and bye-bye Ben as planned. If in the two weeks I find your soul, can sketch it to completion, and can prove that I can touch it at any moment, then I decide what happens next. Chuck is a backup. God I mean. If for any reason one of us goes too far, backs out, whatever, he’s responsible for taking care of the mess we leave behind.”

Sam listened without moving, wincing when Gabriel mentioned Ben. When he finished, he pushed his listed of scribbled questions aside and met Gabriel’s eyes. “What do you mean, find my soul?”

“Right. Okay. So, each and every human’s got a soul. And each and every human’s got a different soul. Different color, different shape, different location. There are only two ways I can see someone’s soul. One: they’ve died or are near death and their soul is asking me to take it to Chuck. Or two: I’m around them enough to see them reveal it.”

“How do we reveal them?” Sam asked. He crossed his arms over his chest while he listened, pushed himself back against the seat cushion. 

Gabriel shrugged, sitting up on the couch, elbows on his knees.. “You show me who you are, what you love, what makes you angry, sad, empty, broken. Human, really. You show me what makes you human.”

“How many deals have you made?”

“I’ve had this gig for a long while now, Sam. Hundreds and hundreds over the years.”

Sam paused. “And recently?”

“You’ll have to narrow that down. Give me a number.”

“The last five years.”

Gabriel sipped at the water on the table while he thought back. It was hard to separate the years from each other, all the threads blending in. “Two, I think.”

Sam frowned, shifting in his chair. “Surely there’ve been more offers.”

Gabriel nodded. Understatement of the year. If he listened, he’d hear one hundred in a second. So, he didn’t listen. Not to them. To Sam’s breathing. To his heart. It was simpler and softer than the pleading of a world as it died.

“So why not them?”  _ Why me _ , he was asking.  _ Why say yes to me _ .  _ There are exceptions _ , humans thought,  _ there are always exceptions. Why am I the one? _

“Many times, it is deals done too late. Deals done to seek revenge. Deals done to attempt to kill me. Deals done as a way to absolve sins. But, I don’t like ‘em. I want deals for the sake of it. One life for another, period. That’s what I heard when I heard you.”

Sam was silent and so was Gabriel. They each took a sip of their ice-clinking drinks and looked anywhere but each other. 

“How many beat you?” Sam asked. 

“Total?” Sam nodded. Gabriel counted them on one hand, holding up two fingers and wiggling them. He expected Sam to blanch at the number, to go pale, to shrivel more than he already had with his legs tucked beneath him. Instead he nodded, sharp, once and asked another question.

“So, what do I call you?”

“Most people call me Death. Used to be Gabriel. It’s yours for the choosing.”

As he spoke next, Sam’s voice broke with the last word, splitting it into two. “Can I say goodbye?”

Gabriel nodded. “I’ll come by at midnight tomorrow. If you agree, be at the door with your contract signed. If not, tell me to fuck off.”

They each stood, nodding their agreement at the plan. Gabriel, careful not to touch Sam as he passed him, headed to the door. Sam followed steps behind.

“See you,” Gabriel called. It was true, whether it be tomorrow or years down the road.

“Bye,” Sam said. Gabriel couldn’t tell which way he swung. He had an inkling it’d be the former by the way Sam started to scribble a note to his brother before Gabriel had even made it down the stairs. 

_ Dear Dean, _ the letter said.  _ I am sorry I left. I know you always told me to stand my ground, but the thing is, sometimes running is the only way to do that. I carry my anger in my heels. You know that as well as I do. And they were lit aflame everyday by dad’s voice, his anger. I tried not to burn the house down. Didn’t want to burn the house down. It seems on my way out, my step faltered and I did. Believe me, I didn’t mean to leave you in flames too. _

_ Dad’s voice was poison, though, and it seeped into everything. Sometimes leaving is the only way to find something fresh to eat, a lake to see my reflection in. That’s all I ever wanted. Water with no blackness inside. I wouldn’t ask you to forgive me, but if you’ve found this then know that I always wanted it. And I love you. Please, my heels have cooled to ice. I haven’t been angry in eternities. _

_ I love you. _

_ Sam. _

With each pencil scratch, Gabriel thought knew what Sam had chosen. Now began Sam’s last day on Earth.

* * *

As the next day dawned and Cas arrived with a sheet shorter than normal, Gabriel took the gaps between his jobs as an opportunity to check in on Sam. He’d have an idea as to whether or not he’d need to knock on his door later this way. Plus he was bored as sin and watching humans was always entertaining, if not downright hilarious.

The first time Gabriel went invisible and checked in, Sam was starting the day with his kids, each of them planted in their assigned seats and only mild whispering scattered through them. Gabriel didn't stay long, but there was laughter coming from the students as they listened to their teacher, dark gray sweater vest around a black t-shirt tucked into light blue pants. He even had glasses perched on his nose. 

Before the fighting and before Death became his name, Gabriel used to reside in heaven, an archangel and an archangel alone. On dreary days and lonesome days, he’d pop down to Earth and do a little wooing. If his touch wasn’t lethal, he thought he might’ve had to woo Mr. Winchester right out of that sweater vest. It was sinful, how it wrapped around his torso. That and the smile, dimples and all. Yeah, he might have had to woo Mr. Winchester indeed.

The second time he peered down, Sam was in a different classroom. The yelling is what drew Gabriel next door, after he’d found Sam’s room empty. Gabriel peered through the little window in the wood door just as Sam was hit in the face by a paper ball launched by a child half his height, battle cries erupting around him. The room was cut in half by a sea of desks turned on their side, kids in the corner stacking them up higher and higher to build a barricade. 

The two sides launched paper balls at each other, all of them wearing paper hats and Gabriel leaned in, nose to glass, to watch the madness. A child pushed open the door narrowly missing crashing into Gabriel, and Gabriel used that opportunity to slip into the room as Sam sank to the floor, careful not to let his arms take the kids down with him.

“Kids,” he whispered to the cluster around him, “don’t let my death be meaningless. Save yourselves, and our country, and win this war for us all. The kids around him, holding paper swords, cheered as Sam let his head thunk against the ground, his teeth clanging against each other. Sam’s death had started a revolution, the kids surging the barricade and clamboring over the other side’s progress with ease. Sam had inspired them all. 

Sam lay still while the kids fell like flies around him, both sides taking hit after paper hit. But, once the battle cleared and Sam’s side won, they all stood up with laughter in their voices. They all had fallen softly, the carpeted ground there to catch them in their battle of paper and voices. 

The bell rang soon after and Sam pulled himself off the ground, hanging behind to help the red-headed teacher clean the room she had just helped them destroy. She had been on the other side, an early casualty, hit while one of her students had asked to go to the bathroom and Sam took advantage of the distraction. Sam had fallen just after as he laughed at her mock outrage and even more dramatic death.

Gabriel watched as they cleaned, Sam doing the heavy lifting, righting desks from the center of the room and helping push them back to their previous homes and the woman collecting hundreds of paper balls the children had called bullets. 

“Nice of you to join the fight,” the woman said.

“Figured I was overdue. Thanks for letting me join Charlie,” Sam said.

“You finish early?” 

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I let the club out a bit early. They were antsy today, it being Friday and all. Figured I’d stop in and say goodbye to you guys on my way out. Then Death suckerpunched me, as it does.”

“Happens to us all sometimes,” Charlie replied. “Come on, I’ll walk out with you.”

The woman gathered her bag from behind her desk, her room restored to something semi-clean. There was still clutter, still walls coated in posters dotted with bright colors and a whiteboard scribbled all over with death tallies and notes. But, it was cleaner than before and the desks were upright, so that counted for something. 

In the hallway, Sam linked his arm with Charlie and they walked together, footsteps echoing against the tile as they swayed, only stepping in the black squares spaced out among the white. It reminded Gabriel of children and he grinned at the sight. “You going to be at the meetings tomorrow? Early morning again.”

Sam opened his mouth, paused. “Yeah, Charlie. Yeah. You bringing coffee or donuts this time?”

Gabriel understood. There was no point in reminding people Death was nearby. Especially when he knew it was. 

The third time he checked in, Sam was home, finger hovering over the call button on his cell phone. Still the note sat on the counter, still there was nothing on the walls. Gabriel didn’t know what he’d expected, but this felt like too much. He disappeared before he could see if Sam hit send or not, the name Dean brightly lit on the screen. It was nearing midnight. 

Gabriel went back home to write his report for Cas and update him on the whole deal situation so he could relay it to Chuck. Might as well be as transparent as possible so he wouldn’t think to worry. Cas frowned but said nothing. What’s done was done. They both knew that.

When midnight struck, like cinder-fucking-ella, Gabriel knocked on Sam’s door. The ball was over, but this time there’d be more than a shoe lost in the aftermath. He waited outside the door, leaning against the wall of Sam’s neighbor’s apartment, gray brick digging into his skin. The midnight world was his and he let his wings unfurl a bit behind him, liking the way the brick scratched at his feathers. 

Not a minute after midnight, Sam opened the door, contract in hand. Gabriel pushed off the wall, holding out his hand. “Your fairy death mother has arrived.”

Sam hardly registered what Gabriel had said, didn’t seem to think it funny. He just slid his sweaty hand into Gabriel’s and goosebumps broke across his skin.

Sam nodded, knowing. That’s what happened when you touched Death with Life still in your veins. Sam held on and Gabriel snapped them to his home in the middle of nothing before Sam’s body could convince him to run.

Gabriel landed softly at the door while Sam buckled to his knees, reaching out to right himself as gravity caught hold him again. Gabriel shrugged. “Sorry, forgot to warn you.”

Sam’s response was caught in his throat as he took in the home that lay before him, tucked within a forest of trees lost in a perpetual winter. Gabriel knew that was his fault, his presence seeping through the cracks beneath his doors and killing the leaves from their branches. It’s why he lived here, in the middle of nowhere, instead of a city. He’d wipe the entire town with a breath and wouldn’t even notice. 

Gabriel ignored Sam’s wonder-filled wide-eyes and stepped forward to open the front door, black and thick, leaving it open for Sam to follow behind. “Close the door behind you.”

Sam did just that and peered around the house of white he’d spend his next two weeks of the strange limbo between life and death he found himself in. Gabriel led him into each room starting on the ground floor, the kitchen he’d remembered to restock, the living room, the library, then upstairs. The next two floors consisting of the hallways of bedrooms and bathrooms, perpetually empty and echo-filled. Gabriel didn’t know who used to live here, only that he found it empty and untouched. 

“Pick whichever room you feel like. Not sure if you’re going to need to sleep or not, so you can bounce between them as you work it out.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked, following at his heels, pausing only to peer into each room as they passed. Some had beds, others only bookshelves and desks. One he’d made into a gaming room through his video game phase, another he’d layered a hammock across and lounged in the spring with the windows cracked ever so slightly to let the smell of flowers in.

“This whole halfway thing has different effects of everyone. Some still sleep, others don’t seem to need it. Some still eat, others don’t. I had one that threw up for the entirety of the first three days.”

“How will I know?”

Gabriel shrugged. “If you’re hungry, eat. If you’re tired, sleep. Do what your body asks and you’ll be fine.”

Gabriel slung a hand onto Sam’s shoulder, going for comfort as best he knew how, and as he said it the goosebumps returned. Sam froze, Gabriel’s words still fresh in his mind. Listen to his body. Right. Gabriel let his arm fall and turned to the hallway they stood in the middle of. “I’ll give you a bit to decide where you’ll set up camp. My room is this first one on your left, bathrooms all the way down on the right. Might not need that either, though. Second floor’s open for the taking too, so take your time.”

Sam nodded, stood in the center of the hallway without making a move forward. He reached into his pocket before jerking suddenly towards Gabriel who’d already started into his own room. 

“It’s fine. I gave it to you for a reason,” Gabriel said before Sam could try to hide the drawing of his mother’s soul tucked into his jeans pocket. Gabriel already had his door shut when Sam whispered his thanks towards the wood of his door, not knowing Gabriel could hear every breath.  _ You’re going to need it _ , Gabriel thought.

Gabriel didn’t listen to Sam moving through the house, didn’t want to hear the thudding of his heart. He tuned it out as best he could and instead sketched a soul from earlier that day into the paper of his sketchbook, waiting for Sam to find him again. When he was ready. If he was ever ready.

It didn’t take long for Sam to knock twice, fist soft, hesitating against the door. The night was deep outside Gabriel’s window, the moon cutting through it sharp and slicing. “Come in.”

“I picked the one at the end of the hall on the second floor, if that’s alright?” The one painted navy blue like the night, the one with the bed tucked between towering bookshelves. The furthest one from Gabriel.

“Sure. If you need anything that’s not there just ask.”

“Will do,” Sam said, standing in the doorway of Gabriel’s room. He took it in in fleeting glances, pretending not to be looking at all. Gabriel knew he saw Gabriel’s bed with white sheets messy and unmade, saw his bare walls, saw his glass desk with the locked drawers. He was sorting the pieces that were Gabriel, while Gabriel tried to do the same to him. “So, what’s next?”

“Well, I figure we can go over the usual schedule for tonight. Give you a rundown on how the rest of the two weeks are going to go.”

Sam nodded, sliding down to sit against the doorframe. He would not come further into the room, but Gabriel paid that no mind. Who would, with a touch as lethal as Death? It hadn’t yet hit Sam that Gabriel’s touch would not kill him in this half-dead state he hovered in. 

“Want to take notes or anything?” Gabriel offered. Sam shook his head and waited. “Alrighty then. Each morning, one of God’s angels comes with the list of souls for the day. His name’s Cas. Wears a trenchcoat. He’s a good guy. You ever need anything but don’t feel comfortable asking me, ask him and he’ll help you out. 

“Anyway, with the lists, sometimes it’s only a few souls for the day, sometimes it’s one hundred. Our day isn’t done until the list is, and Chuck still gives us a night to rest. We get a minimum of six hours of break without fail. Time will work with us to make it so. Meaning, regardless of the time it feels, you will remain here for thirteen nights by this moon.

“You will do as I say while you’re here. For the first day at least, you’ll just be watching. After that, it’s free reign. Each night, when the list is done, we come back here and write a report for Cas to pick up. Now, as a rule between us, each night we will trade stories. And each night we will tell each other one thing we learned about the other. It levels the playing field if we both know where the other stands in terms of the whole soul finding thing.” 

At Sam’s nodding once again, Gabriel continued. “I have three rules you will also need to follow. One: do not lie. Not to me, but especially not to the souls you interact with. Two: No deals. Not with you here. I can only have one and you don’t have the power to make a deal happen anyway. And three: you can’t fall in love with them, or me,” Gabriel added with a wink, “It’s tempting, believe me. But it will only bring harm. Questions?”

Sam stared at the ground, overwhelmed and outranked here in a home he only just met. “What kind of stories will we trade?”

“It’s got to be at least a bit meaningful to you. Don’t much care beyond that.”

“Will it hurt?”

Gabriel didn’t know if he meant living in this in-between state, or if he meant touching a soul. For each, the answer was the same. “Yes. Anything else?”

Sam shook his head, standing with his back still against the doorframe. “I’ll probably have more in the morning.”

Gabriel nodded, watching as Sam fled down the hall. He whispered, “Goodnight, Sam.”

With heavy footsteps pounding against the stairs and click of the lock on his door, Gabriel didn’t think he heard him at all. It wouldn’t have changed anything, if he was being honest with himself, but still. Rude. Gabriel too shut his door and they spent the remainder of the night too aware of the person at the other end of the hallway, one floor between them feeling like inches and worlds simultaneously. 


	5. Chapter 5

Morning came with the sun, or with the sun morning, and Sam knocked on Gabriel’s door before Cas had arrived yet. “It’s open.”

The door creaked as Sam eased it open. His hair was damp on his shoulders, leaving wet spots against his gray t-shirt. The jeans he found in the dresser exposed his ankles, only reaching his shins when he stood straight up. Gabriel, taking them in, snorted. “Morning.”

“Shut up, these are the longest in all the dressers. I searched every room.” Sam scowled at Gabriel’s laughter.

“I know I heard the drawers for the last hour,” Gabe said, still laughing. At Sam’s frown, Gabriel sighed, letting the smile fall and fixed the high-waters Sam had forced himself into. It only took a snap. Gabriel briefly thought about not fixing it, but it wouldn’t be funny if Sam went to take a soul and ended up having to deal with ripped pants instead because he was a giant and couldn’t fit in the jeans Gabriel kept stocked. Sam’s face changed, and Gabriel could tell he was trying to mask his surprise. He shrugged and turned back to his desk.

Behind him, Sam shoved his hands into his pockets, hiding how much they were shaking around the sketch of his mother’s soul. From what Gabriel had seen, he looked haggard and he knew then that Sam wasn’t just an active sleeper. “You try to sleep?” Gabriel asked.

“Tried.”

“But couldn’t?” Gabriel prompted.

“Not a wink. Can’t tell if it’s because I don’t need sleep or if it’s because I’m so…” Sam trailed off waving his hand at Gabriel.  _ Scared, terrified, uncomfortable _ . Gabriel could fill in the blanks just fine. He kept his reaction inside. It only stung a little.

“Cas’ll be here soon with today’s list. Should be pretty light, being your first day and all,” Gabriel said, moving on.

“Sounds good,” Sam said. With that, Cas appeared with a flutter of his wings echoing through the empty room. Sam stumbled back from the doorway where Cas had landed too close, the back of his knees hitting Gabriel’s bed. He sank onto it, heart thudding. 

“Don’t worry, not even I’m used to that yet.” Gabriel stood, turning to Cas in the doorway. “Cassie, I’d like you to meet Sam Winchester. Sam, Cas. He’ll be my assistant for the next two weeks.”  _ Or less. _

“Pleasure to meet you, Sam. Gabriel, here’s the list for today.”

There were only four names for the day and Gabriel sent a thank you prayer to Chuck above. He had time to show Sam the ropes without dragging the day into eternity and exhausting the already exhausted and still terrified man on the bed.

“Thanks Cas,” Gabriel said. Cas disappeared as quickly as he came, just as stiff and awkward as ever, and Sam let out a breathy, forced laugh. It came off more deranged than anything, but his heart wasn’t thudding nearly as hard so it must have helped somehow.

“You good?” Gabriel asked. Sam shrugged, eyes on the floor.  “Okayyy, well you ready to go then?”

This time, Sam looked up, heart spiking back into its panicked thundering. But, he stood, wiping his hands on his jeans, and he nodded. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

Sam held out his hand. Gabriel took it in his own, wondering how inappropriate it would be to crack a joke about how sweaty Sam’s nervous hands were, and decided not to. Instead, he snapped them to the first location and together they arrived at the doorstep to the first soul Sam would see. It was an easy first soul. No fire, no falling, no frantic scramble to get the soul before it died too. 

It was an elderly home, building starting to fall away from the years of wear and tear. Brick crumbled from the corners and the sidewalk was dull and dotted with gum. Inside, the world was slower, softer, even their footsteps didn't seem to fall so loud on the worn carpet. Gabriel kept them cloaked, and they walked through the hallways, Sam following Gabriel through the too sweet smelling rooms, until he found the door to his first job of the day. 

It led to the garden soaked in morning and she sat, wrinkled-bone fingers resting atop a closed book in her lap. The nurses had tried to drape a blanket, wool and scratchy, across her shoulders, but it consumed her instead. Some people took up little space in this world. In Gabriel's experience, their souls were usually the largest. The brightest. By that, Sam was a wonder all on his own and he didn’t even know it. 

From where they stood at the edge of the sidewalk where the patio diverged into pathways through the flowers and the trimmed hedges, he could see her soul, pale pink shining from long slivers that reached over her shoulders and met in the center of her chest. More came from behind her ribcage, too. As they approached, Sam fell further and further behind, footsteps faltering. Gabriel pressed on. He’d have to do this regardless, what point was there in prolonging it?

The woman looked up as Gabriel stepped into her shallow line of sight, the jacaranda flowers from the tree she sat under forming a purple and soft rain to fall down on them both. “Hello boys. I assume it’s time?”

Gabriel nodded, grinning at the glint in her eye. She looked up at the flowers tangling in her hair and nodded. “Lucky me, to go in so beautiful of a place with boys as pretty as you two. Knew you’d be coming soon. Momma always said Death would come with the flowers and here you are.”

“Here we are,” Gabriel said, holding out his hands as flowers fell into them and shriveled. He winced and let them fall to the ground. Around his feet, the grass curled in on itself, browned, hid. The flowers falling onto her too shriveled simply for being so close to him. She stared at the few that had fallen onto the back of her hands and she tisked. 

“Sorry miss. I don’t mean any harm,” Gabriel said.

“Now, now, don’t you apologize for being what you are. Tell me what you need from me.”

“Can you stand?” Gabriel asked.

“I’d rather be here, sitting beneath my tree.”

Gabriel crouched beside her, motioning for Sam to move closer from where he hovered at the beginning of the path. He approached slowly, craning his neck to watch over Gabriel’s shoulder without getting too close. “Sure. Now, I’m going to take your hand and you’ve just got to hand over your soul. Think you can do that?”

“Sure can, sweetheart.” The woman closed her eyes and her soul slid from between her shoulder blades, from her ribcage, a few long pieces coming, even, from her heels, and moved them to her hands to slide into Gabriel’s palm. A shadow of her old body stood from beneath the tree, facing them both. Sam’s breath caught as she looked at her old body, still sitting against the tree.

“Let’s get you home,” Gabriel said, taking Sam’s hand in one and the woman’s soul in the other. 

“What’s her name?” Sam whispered to Gabriel before they left. 

“Summer,” she said. “Call me Summer.” 

Gabriel snapped them to Chuck’s door in heaven, wooden and thick. Gabriel could still feel the heart of the tree it used to be, if he tried. It had a soft voice, that tree, and had lived hundreds of years before falling in the middle of a thunderstorm caused by Chuck’s yelling one day. As an apology, he’d turned a piece of it into his door and trusted it to protect him day in and day out. It was happy now, Gabriel could feel that too.

“Welcome to Heaven,” Gabriel said, both to Summer and to Sam. Each of them let their eyes wander to Cas’s desk in the corner of the lobby outside Chuck’s door, desk fortress-like and deep black. The walls on either side were lined with cushioned chairs where the souls were asked to wait, and the hallway opposite led to other important offices with people Gabriel tried not to interact with ever. The rule-following ass-kissers that got their jobs by doing just that, following rules and kissing ass.

Gabriel turned to Summer, her hand wrapped around his bicep as she took in what Heaven was after years of imagining it. “Okay, this is where we leave you.”

Gabriel let go of Sam’s hand, left him to wander around, and led Summer to a seat beside Cas’s desk. He would get her the paperwork she needed, let Chuck know she had arrived. He’d take it from here. She held onto his bicep until she was seated all the way and as he turned to go, she called out. “Wait, young man.” 

“Yeah?” Gabriel asked.

“No, not you. Him.” She pointed to Sam where he hovered near Cas’s desk. His head jerked up, surprised. “Come here.”

Sam obeyed, looming over the woman where she sat. In her shadow palms she still held two of the flowers from the jacaranda in the garden and, as Sam bent down to hear her whisper, she tucked them behind his ear. “I’m sure the universe won’t mind.”

“No,” Gabriel chimed in as Sam froze, unsure if this was allowed. “I don’t mind either.”

“Oh good. Alright, now. Bye boys. Enjoy your day for me.”

“Yes ma’am, we will,” Sam said with a backwards glance at her, sitting in the waiting room alone. 

“She’ll be fine,” Gabriel rolled his eyes.

“But she was so nice,” Sam said. 

“We’ve all got our time and then it’s over. Doesn’t matter how nice you are.”

Sam didn’t say anything, just let Gabriel take his hand and snap them to the next soul for the day.

They stood at the entrance to an alleyway, buildings on both sides towering over them with water-darkened brick. Wind bounced between the buildings with a howl, sending crumpled paper skittering toward their feet. Sam bent down to pick it up, lifting the lid to the huge green dumpster to throw it away. Gabriel said nothing. Didn’t tell him doing that would only move the paper to a garbage dump to be blown away elsewhere. The Earth would not thank him for the change of location. It mattered not to her. 

Their footsteps echoed up to the stormy sky rumbling with soft thunder. It was not the kind Chuck brought, but the kind the Earth made herself. As they approached the figure at the end of the alley, Sam again fell into step at Gabriel’s back. It was his day to watch, his day to figure out what mess he’d made for himself in whichever way he pleased. 

The soul they were claiming belonged to a young woman this time. She was curled against the wall, thin and shivering, arms wrapped around her legs. She couldn’t have been older than twenty, thin blonde hair hitting her shoulders from beneath a tattered beanie. She shivered so loud Gabriel could hear the fabric of her shirt scratching from the entry to the alley and it ground on his nerves. 

As they got closer, Gabriel could see her soul, almost translucent and confined to the bend of her elbow. “Sam, see her soul yet? There in the bend of her elbow? That’s what we look for when doing these jobs. The faster we see it, the faster we get them onward, the faster their souls stay rot free.”

“Rot?” Sam asked.

“I’ll explain later.” Gabriel made a mental note to do just that as they neared the woman at the end of the alley. When she noticed them approach, she looked up and gave a weak smile. “Are you here to help me?”

Gabriel sat down against the brick beside her and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah we are.”

“Can you tell my family I’m sorry?” At that, Gabriel rolled his eyes. She was earnest, though, and watery eyed. He softened his words.

“Sorry, no can do,” Gabe said. Sam’s teeth hit with a clack inside his mouth, jaw clenching to hold back the questions dying to come out, but Gabriel ignored him for the time being. He had a soul to take, a job to do.

“Please?” she whispered.

“Do you have paper with you?” Gabriel asked. “I can let you write a note for them to find, but other than that you’re shit out of luck.”

“Thank you,” she said, scribbling out her apologies with shaking hands from a scrap of paper she pulled from her pocket. “Can I go home first, before this happens?”

This is why he didn’t do deals, they asked for more and more and more. He shook his head. “I’ve already let you do more than I should have”

She nodded. She understood. “Okay, I’m ready.”

Gabriel nodded, reaching out to take her soul into his hands. She let it go willingly and together they walked to the end of the alley before snapping up to heaven. When she was seated in the waiting room, she called out a thank you just as they disappeared again. 

Once gone, Sam turned to Gabriel. “Why don’t you grant wishes?”

“That’s not really my job. If Chuck deems it right, he’ll do it for them. Besides, they always end up asking for more time and that’s not something I can do.”

“So just tell them you’ll grant one and one only.”

“There are days when I have to take hundreds of souls because of a disaster, a war, something terrible and grand. I don’t have time to lay out rules for people to ignore and still ask for more time.”

“But-”

“I have to draw the line somewhere.”  _ Or I’ll find so many reasons to never take a life again. _

“But you let her write a note.”

Gabriel nodded.  _ It was for you. I did not want you to think me as much of a monster _ , Gabriel thought. But with the way Sam stood further than arm’s reach, Gabriel could see he still did. “She should’ve done that long ago.”

“Why did she die?” Sam asked.

Gabriel shrugged. “I don’t ask. Just do as the list says.”

Gabriel used to, back when Metatron was the one writing him the lists each morning and he lived in the room attached to Metatron’s office. He’d spend hours searching, figuring out what caused the people to die. Too many times Gabriel found them with still time on their plate. But, with Chuck, he knew he wouldn’t do as Metatron did and take lives early. It had hurt Chuck too. That was the whole reason Metatron did it at all. 

The last two, Sam spent silent and Gabriel too, only breaking in to explain how the basics on how the whole process worked. By the end of it, Sam was sagging to the ground, all the souls he’d seen heavy on his shoulders. Gabriel took them home and they parted at the stairs.

“Remember we’ve got the report to write, the stories to trade,” Gabriel said. 

“Later,” Sam said, shutting his door without a backward glance. Gabriel sank into his chair and pulled out his sketchbook, this time trying to remember what Sam’s soul had looked like all those years ago. It had been drowning, obscured by the water that tried to consume him. Still, Gabriel knew it looked like the sun and so he tried to spot pieces of it in Sam. He hadn’t yet found much, only the small shimmer in the hallway of Heaven room that came alongside his sadness once again. It wasn’t enough. Not even close.

After one hour faded into the next and still Sam didn’t come to do what they needed to do, Gabriel shut his sketchbook, sighed and stood. He stretched his back as he made his way downstairs and  knocked on Sam’s door. “Let’s get this done. Living room in five.”

The change of scenery would help them both, instead of encroaching on the space they’d each laid claim to for their time together. “Okay,” Sam called, “ I’ll be down in a minute.”

Gabriel flopped onto the sofa to wait, ears straining to hear Sam’s footsteps as moved around his room upstairs, as they came down the hall, as they appeared at the top of the staircase. Sam, on the ground floor, sat in a recliner across from Gabriel and waited for Gabriel to lead the way in this conversation. “Okay, first, any questions from today?”

Sam nodded. “You said rot?”

“Oh right, totally forgot about that. So, when someone dies, their soul waits for me or someone else to fetch it and lead it to Heaven. Most humans can’t find their way without help and a set of wings, right? That’s what we did today, fetching souls that waited. If for whatever reason the soul isn’t brought to Heaven and instead is left on Earth just waiting, then it starts to rot.”

“What happens when it rots?” Sam asked, leaning forward in his seat.

Gabriel shrugged. “Depends. Some will burst into flame, some just simply rot, others explode. Rumor has it the grand canyon was caused by a particularly bad soul, though I wasn’t in the gig at that point so I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that.”

Sam looked taken aback, fingers twisting around each other in his lap. Gabriel let him digest the information before asking if he had any more questions. Sam shook his head.

“Sure, sure. If any more spring up, be sure to let me know.”  _ That’s what the nights are for, reliving every second. _ “Stories next or what you learned?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Alright, let’s trade stories. Anything you’d like to know about me in particular?”

“How’d you get this job?” Sam asked.

“Sort of a long story, but I’ll give you the cliffnotes version. After the fighting in heaven, after Lucifer was cast away and fell, Chuck couldn’t cope with what had happened. He’d lost his son, and one of his favorites at that. In his sadness, he fell into a depression fit for a God and another angel grabbed at the chance to rise to power. He turned the angels against Chuck, used his sadness and his loss of his child against him. Asked if the angels really wanted a leader that could break so easily. If we wanted a leader who didn’t care about us at all. Some of the angels bought the bullshit.

“Didn’t take long until he was sitting behind Chuck’s desk, new nameplate carved from pieces of the stars. That’s when he started casting angels out of heaven left and right. Think the humans down below called it a surprise meteor shower, took pictures and everything. I’m sure you could find it if you searched.”

“Why’d he kick them out?” Sam interrupted. 

Gabriel shrugged. “A stray word, a weird look. For nothing, even, they’d lose their wings and had to walk the Earth alone. As his power crept closer to my brothers and myself, I grasped at any opportunity to keep my wings. Old Death was cast out for refusing to take a soul, I slid into his place without asking. No one even noticed.

“There was fumbling and mistakes and in each moment I thought for sure I’d feel my wings burn from my back. But time passed and it never came. And then Chuck dug himself from his sadness and came back to a heaven full of echoes. He tossed Metatron out in an instant, but couldn’t recover the children he’d lost. I kept my wings and have been here ever since.”

“The old Death wouldn’t take a soul? Why not?”

Gabriel’s mouth went bitter. “Metatron was taking them before their time. Before he was meant to. Death had had enough of prying souls from bodies not supposed to die yet. He said no.”

“Did he,” Sam met Gabriel’s eyes, “did he do that to you too?”  _ Did you rip souls from people’s bodies too? _

Gabriel held out his hands where his fingers were tattered and scarred over. “You don’t get these babies by only taking souls ripe for the taking.”

Sam flinched as he took in the scarring, the mess of skin and bone Gabriel’s fingers were. He looked up, searching for words he didn’t have and Gabriel just shook his head. He bit out a sharp laugh. “Still got my wings though.” 

“Do you like the job?” Sam asked after a moment.  _ Was it worth it, those souls for your wings? _

With the echoes of his brothers’ screaming ringing in his ears, watching his brethren falling, Gabriel paused. At least here the walls didn’t let the screaming in. “Some days it’s better than Heaven, other days not so much. You’ll see.”

“My turn?” Sam asked. Gabriel nodded. “What do you want to know?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Anything. Start simple. Tell me about your brother, your job, Ben, your childhood. Start anywhere. We’ve got time.”

Sam took a breath, glancing at Gabriel before letting his eyes fall short again. “When I was younger, my mother died. Don’t know why I’m telling you this, you already know that. But, this isn’t about her. The thing is, she’d always say not to love someone who’d never love me back. I took that to heart, sewed it into my bones. It was one of the last things she told me. She never did, though, warn me about loving someone so much my world would fall apart once they were gone. 

“My dad was one of those people. My mother, his world. In place of the lightness she brought to his world, darkness took it’s rightful place in his heart, on his tongue, in his fists. When my legs were long enough to carry me, when I finally had fists of my own, I left. I escaped to Stanford, but it might as well have been anywhere. As long as the water was clean, I’d have gone in a heartbeat.”

He trailed off there, and Gabriel knew better not to press him. He’d seen a shimmer of his soul, in the indent of his collarbone peaking out from beneath the v-neck he wore as he talked about his father’s fists. It was gold, like he remembered, but still there wasn’t enough. 

“Alright. Now, it’s up to you how we go about the rest of this. Do you want to just talk about what we learned after the stories like just now, or do you want to write whatever it is down each night and compare sometime later?”

“Which would you prefer?” Sam asked.

“Don’t much matter to me.”

“Alright, let’s just write it down and compare later.”

“Sure, sounds good,” Gabriel said. 

“So, we’re done here?” Sam asked, muscle tensing as the idea of escape itched at the back of his heels. Gabriel nodded and before he was done, Sam had stood from the recliner and started up the stairs. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Gabriel sighed. There was never enough distance between him and the living. Even the half-living. Even the dead. 

Gabriel followed suit, kicking his shoes off in the doorway of his room and pulling the door so it was open only a crack. He’d hear Sam call this way, he told himself, just in case he needed something. He could hear Sam scribbling inside a notebook Gabriel had snapped into his room when they’d been downstairs, and the scribbling didn’t stop until long after Gabriel had finished staining his own hands with graphite and the leftovers of souls he’d touched.

Morning broke and Gabriel found himself knocking at Sam’s door. Inside, Sam’s breathing was quiet. Had he found sleep after all? Gabriel knocked again, harder, and Sam’s voice broke through. “Be out in a sec. Has Cas come by yet?”

“Not yet, but he’ll be by soon. You need food or anything before we go?” Gabriel called through the door.

Sam opened the door, using a towel to rub the water from his hair and his feet bare. “Uh, I’m still not sure. Haven’t even tried. Maybe I’ll just drink some coffee if you’ve got any?”

“Okay, I’ll put a pot on. Cream? Sugar?”

“I’ll be down before then. Just need to put some shoes on.”

“Take your time beauty queen, I’ll be in the kitchen,” Gabriel said with a wink, turning before Sam could reply. Gabriel thought just maybe he heard the softest shadow of laughter from the stairs, but then again it was windy and the dead trees held whispers too.

In the kitchen, the black granite countertops were bare and empty. If Gabriel hadn’t had the occasional assistant that needed food, he’d have gutted the room and turned it into something different. An indoor pool maybe, or a ball pit. That could be fun. 

But, he did let people come into his house and, besides, what was a house without a kitchen filled with windows? It had been some time since Gabriel bothered making anything, but still he loved his kitchen. He ran his hands over the counters softly, taking in the warmth of the room. He pulled out his coffee machine, knowing full well he could snap some up for Sam in an instant. It was a waste, though, and it never tasted as good as the home brewed stuff anyway.

Once, with a different assistant long ago, he’d tried snapping up a home cooked meal for her to munch on. She’d spit it out in seconds, saying it tasted like plastic. There were things grace could do, and cooking something for a purpose other than nutrition and nutrition alone was not one of them. Instead, he filled his fridge and let them do as they pleased with it. 

Just as Gabriel put the pot on, Sam appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, notebook in hand. “I was thinking we could do what we learned in the mornings? Just to break things up.”  _ And to give you the night to compose your thoughts _ , Gabriel thought. He agreed, retreating upstairs to grab his own notebook. He’d have to hide the page he’d written on, though. The night before while he listened to Sam scribble, Gabriel had tried to sketch Sam’s soul again from the pieces he’d seen so far. And just below it, he’d written what he’d learned about Sam.

Gabriel sank into the kitchen chair across from Sam to find a mug of coffee waiting for him. He shrugged and took a sip, the heat hitting his nonexistent tastebuds long before the texture and strength that came with the bitterness did. He stirred in some sugar before they started and looked up to see Sam watching him, eyebrows raised. Okay, maybe he’d stirred more than a little sugar. But on second taste, the texture was softer, less of an attack and Gabriel was a happy camper. He grinned at Sam over his mug and nodded to the notebook in his hands.

“How do you want me to do this?” Sam asked.

“Should we do maybe one sentence to sum it all up?” Gabriel suggested. 

“Sure, that’s fine.” Sam’s eyes skimmed his page full of scribbles until he landed on one, rereading it a few times. “Death, I learned, is strange.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I haven’t got much to base this on, but you’re full of contradictions already.” Sam seemed to brace himself for anger, but Gabriel had none. He wasn’t wrong. Who didn’t have contradictions hidden in their words? 

“Nah, you’ve got me there,” Gabriel admitted. “And you, Mr. Winchester, are running.”

His story the night before, the letter he’d written, his house empty and backpack perpetually packed, Gabriel had that one figured out in an instant. It was easy to see what people were doing, harder to figure out why. He would, though, he would. There was no doubt in his mind. Sam said nothing, sipping at his coffee while the sun rose outside the dead forest.

They left their notebooks on the table to retrieve later as Cas appeared upstairs and called out for them. “Down here,” Gabriel called as Sam made a move to the door. “It’s fine, he can find us.”

Cas wandered in the doorway and, with Sam sitting closest to the door, held out the list for him to take. Sam took it hesitantly, like it would bite him if he did. He slid it to Gabriel across the table and didn’t seem to realize what he was doing as he wiped his hand on his jeans over and over again. He turned to Cas, still wiping.“Morning, Cas. How’s it going?” 

“I’m fine, Sam. Thank you. How about yourself?”

“I’m good, thanks. Trying to get used to this place.”

“More like me,” Gabriel chimed in. Sam flinched and the smile fell from Gabriel’s face. He’d forgotten Sam wasn’t used to him, his humor, his touch. Had forgotten where Sam came from. Gabriel shrugged it off and smiled at Cas. “Anything new?”

Cas shook his head. “No. It’s all the same in Heaven.”

“Alright, see you later then little bro.”

“Bye Gabriel, Sam.”

The list was short as well, only five names on it for the day. Chuck had given them another day with room to spare. Tomorrow, Gabriel knew, would be business as usual. He told Sam so and Sam just nodded. He didn’t know what that meant. How could he? 

Sam stood, taking each of their empty mugs and washing them at the sink, pulling dish soap from beneath the counter Gabriel didn’t even know he owned anymore. He dried them too, with the yellow towels Gabriel used as accents over the handle of the stove and put them back in the cupboard Gabriel pointed to silently, watching with a grin. 

“What?” Sam asked.

“Nothing,” Gabriel said. There was something so human about the whole thing, so methodical and pointless. Gabriel just held out his hand for Sam to slide his own into to start the day. Sam did just that and off they were to the first soul of the day. 

“Shit, shit, shit,” Gabriel hissed as they arrived, inches from falling, cliffs looming on all sides with jagged edges cutting the sky. Below them, a man was flying, falling through the sky towards a body of water much too far to catch him. Gabriel sprang into action, leaving Sam to cling to anything he could as Gabriel’s wings snapped open once again. Gabriel nodded towards Sam, who without question wrapped his arms around Gabriel’s shoulders, legs wrapping around his waist. Gabriel took two steps and leapt from the cliff face, tucking his wings in close as they dove through the air, Sam clinging the whole way.  

As they neared, Gabriel grabbed for the man’s soul where it shone from his calf, lightening white and narrow. A groan of frustration fell from his lips as he missed, another begging to be let out as Gabriel felt Sam’s muffled cry of dismay. He ignored it, swooping in again to pry the soul from the man’s calf before he hit the ground getting closer and closer. On his third try, as the ground was close enough to touch, Gabriel managed to get a hold of it and the man’s body continued downward as Gabriel pulled up with his soul in hand and Sam clinging tight still.

He snapped them to Heaven before the man could see what became of his body, and he sat him down in the chairs outside Chuck’s door.

Sam was silent and radiating anger while Gabriel dropped the soul off in heaven. Aware of this, Gabriel led Sam into a room down the hall from Chuck’s office, a conference room with the long hardwood table and no one inside. “Before you start

yelling, he wouldn’t have survived.”

“How do you know?” Sam crossed his arms over his chest, eyes narrowed.

“Wouldn’t be on the list if he survived, Sam.”

“But what if he did. You killed him before it was time. You stole his life from him. I thought you didn’t do that anymore.”

“Come with me,” Gabriel said, holding out his hand. Sam stared at it, unmoving. “I’m not asking Sam.”

Rolling his eyes, Sam linked his fingers with Gabriel and Gabriel flew them back to where they’d just been where the man’s body landed. Red spatter dusted the ground and Sam started to heave. Gabriel flew them back to Heaven.

“Sam, if I hadn’t taken the soul from that man’s body, his soul would have become much the same as his body. We’d still be scraping pieces out of his body parts. That man just thanked me for the pain we saved him from,” Gabriel snarled, stepping closer to Sam. He let the snarl fall, seeing Sam’s flinch. “The Earth may be kind, may be beautiful, may be alive, but it has never been soft.”

Sam said nothing, still bent over with his hands on his knees. His face was pale, his body shaking.

“Remember the rules I laid forth or you won’t make it to the end of this.”  _ You will fail if you let yourself love them. _ Sam flinched, eyes shooting to Gabriel’s hands. He hadn’t meant it that way, as a threat, but he left it there to hang. Let him think Gabriel into a monster, fear made the soul appear in the same way love did.

Letting his fists and anger fall, Gabriel grabbed the trashcan by the door and slid it to Sam with his foot. “I’ll be outside when you’re ready.”

Gabriel leaned against the wall, pressing the imprint of his boot into the white wall of Heaven while he waited for Sam to compose himself. He emerged and stood in front of Gabriel without meeting his eyes. He was still pale, but the color was returning to his cheeks and Gabriel pushed off the wall, holding out his hand without a word.

For the next three, they bounced between hospitals in silence. Gabriel thought he may have gone too far, showing Sam what he did. But, how else would he learn? He asked for it the minute he opened his mouth to argue with Gabriel. It was a learning experience. Some had to leave scars behind.

For the last soul of the day, Gabriel snapped them to the steps of a two story home, bright red door and wooden shutters decorating the outside. It screamed typical, normal. Gabriel tried to guess why they were here but came up empty. Death by middle-class boredom, he supposed. But, as the door clicked open to a living room of hardwood, there was a man in the center of the stripped rug, blood pooling around him. A woman sat in the opposite corner of the room, curled into a ball and staring at her hands. She had bruises forming around her neck, handprints that Gabriel would bet matched the asshole bleeding out on the carpet. His fists were calloused, too, and Gabriel felt Sam put the pieces together and stiffen at his side.

Gabriel, anger pooling in his gut, stepped forward and bent down to take the man’s soul. It shrank away from him though, sinking deeper into the man’s stomach and dimming itself to hide. As Gabriel reached forward to brush the man’s skin, it thrashed, darted across his body to the opposite side of Gabriel. The woman across the room let out a whimper and for a moment, Gabriel thought she could see what was happening. Shaking his head, he reminded himself she wouldn’t be able to see any of them, not the man now he was dead, not Gabriel, nor Sam. All she was looking at was her hands and the glass of the vase and it’s flower petals scattered across the floor.

The soul fought still and his eyes shot open, full of rage. “I’ll kill her for this.”

“No,” Gabriel growled while Sam stepped between the man’s gaze and the woman across the room. He became a wall so willingly, to save her from his gaze “You won’t.”

“This is none of your business. Who are you anyway? You the guy she’s fucking when I’m not home?”

With his voice backed in thunder he borrowed from Chuck without asking, Gabriel whispered. “This is my business. I am Death and it is time to remove yourself from this planet.”

“You honestly think I’m stupid enough to believe you’re Death? Little old you? Him maybe, but you? Not a chance.”

There was anger brewing black smoke from inside and Gabriel let it seep through his hands, from his mouth, the tips of his fingers. “Give me your soul or I’ll leave it here. You have two minutes.”

“No. Fuck off.” The man beneath his hands scrambled up into a sitting position, forgetting he’d died or not believing it. He didn’t move, though, couldn’t. He could only speak and that was more his soul’s doing anyway. Gabriel snorted at the failed attempt.

“Ohh, I see what this is. Sam, don’t you see what this is?” Gabriel said, turning to Sam with stormclouds in his eyes where he still stood at his back, guarding the woman without her knowing it.

“What’s that Gabriel?” Sam responded, all the color back in his cheeks in his silent, stewing anger. Gabriel could see how badly he wanted to wrap his arms around her, tell her that it was okay. And the way he wanted to pummel the man on the ground. He held himself back, though, and Gabriel commended the kid for his restraint.

“He’s stalling, Sammy, don’t you see. Little tiny Tom here is terrified. If his bladder still worked, he’d be pissing his pants. Because, Tom here, well, he’s not a good man. Not even close. And, surprise surprise, he knows it. Just look at the way he flinches from my hands.” Gabriel held out a hand and Tom’s soul scrambled away. “What’s wrong, Tommy, are you afraid to go to Hell?”

“I don’t believe in Hell,” Tom snarled. “Now get the fuck out of my house.”

“No can do. Either you give me your soul, or I leave it here. You’ve got one minute.”

“I’d listen to him,” Sam piped up, darkness threaded in his voice to match Gabriel’s. 

“Why’s that, string bean?” 

“He doesn’t tell lies,” Sam said. “As much as he’d probably like to for scum like you.”

“Don’t bother, Sam. He’ll never listen,” Gabriel said, eyes still on the man and his shaking soul.

Sam, from behind him, cut in. “Let’s go, Gabriel. I think his time’s up.”

“I think you’re right, Sammy boy.” Gabriel held out his hand and Sam reached for it with only a backwards glance at the woman still shivering in the corner. 

“Wait,” the man called as Gabriel let his wings unfurl. He must not have seen anything pretty, because he recoiled from the sight.

Gabriel turned his back on the man, dusting his black jeans free of the blood as best he could. It had soaked in, though, and he knew there’d be no recovering his jeans without a little bit of grace. “You’ll have to ask nicely. You’ve pissed Sammy off here and he’s not one to forgive.”

“Please. Don’t leave me here. Please,” the man pleaded.

“I don’t know, is that enough Sam?”

“Apologize,” Sam said.  The man started to stammer a sorry, but Sam cut him off. “No. Not to us. To  _ her _ .”

The man’s head turned and he opened his mouth. Nothing came out. In another room, a child started to call and the woman broke out of the haze she’d fallen into, wiping her hands on the hem of her dress as she righted herself. 

“One minute, sweetie. I’ll come kiss you goodnight,” she called. 

As she stood, the man whispered a thin apology. “There, you happy?”

“Not really,” Gabriel said. Turning to Sam, Gabriel raised his eyebrows in question. Sam nodded once, so Gabriel stalked up to the man, tore his soul from his knuckles, and snapped them to Chuck’s door. He pointed to a seat and left without a word.

Back at the mansion, day done, Gabriel started up the stairs while Sam stayed downstairs. 

At the top of the stairs, Gabriel turned. “Why’d you do it? Say yes?”

“I didn’t want to leave his soul in her house. It wasn’t fair to her. Can’t imagine a soul like his rots gently. I wouldn’t want to live in a house with that.”

Gabriel nodded, thinking the whole way into his room just how human Sam was. 

When the report was written and the time had come to share stories from their past, Gabriel made his way into Sam’s room. Sam sat against the wall, cross legged on his bed. Gabriel hesitated, choosing to sink into the office chair at Sam’s desk. He’d leave space until Sam closed the distance. It was only fair.

“What do you want to know?” Sam asked as Gabriel sat down. His eyes were turned to the window above his headboard where the stars dotted the blank sky.

“What did you want to be when you were younger?”

Sam paused, huffing a small laugh as he started to speak with something soft in his voice. “When I was little, just high enough to run into the countertop-”

“So, what, two for you?”

Sam rolled his eyes, turning to Gabriel. “Funny.”

“Sam, with your height, you must have come out of the womb three feet tall,” Gabriel said. Sam raised his eyebrows, a small smile tugging up the corners of his mouth. Gabriel could tell by the way the world softened, the noise of the dead forest quieting outside. Sam’s smile had magic threaded inside. For the first time, Gabriel could see Sam’s shoulders settle, his muscles relax. No longer a man about to run, at least not at the minute. 

“You done?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, yeah, Samsquatch, continue.”

“Right, so, I must have been six or seven at the time. I remember sitting cross-legged on the rug, colorful puzzle pieces in the center of the room. We had a guest speaker. An astronaut. She brought her suit with her to show us, too. We all got to pass the helmet around after she spoke, but we couldn’t put it on. There’d been lice that year,” Sam stared back out the window before starting again. “She had been talking for a while, though it can’t really have been quite as long as I remember. She’d been talking for long enough that I wasn’t really listening anymore. Until she said, ‘Even astronauts have to take pieces of Earth with them when they touch the stars’. ‘What do you mean?’ a girl from the back asked. 

“The astronaut then asked us all to throw out ideas of things we might bring to space. From the corner of the room, a young boy who hardly spoke chimed up. ‘Pictures?’ The astronaut tossed him a badge with NASA embroidered across it. We’d all been eyeing those the whole time she talked.

“There was a flood, then, all of our voices clamboring over each other, trying to be heard. Our teacher sent us to our seats to write down five things we would bring with us on a worksheet, something we had to color afterwards. I guess they could only bring five, the astronauts on her mission. I remember thinking it would be a breeze while all the kids around me frowned and chewed their pencils.

“They walked around, my teacher and the astronaut, and they read our lists and ask us questions about why. Why this and not that, what we would miss, that sort of thing. And then they got to me. And on my paper, there were only three things.

  1. Oxygen
  2. Food
  3. Water
  4. -
  5. -



“She looked at me, and she said, ‘You'd make an astronaut like no other.’ I replied, ‘I've always wanted to live on the moon.’ She gave me a badge then, and I've always remembered how sad she was when she slid it into my hands.” Sam trailed off there, before adding, “ Always did want to be an astronaut though.” 

Throughout the story, Gabriel had started to fill in the outline he had gathered of Sam until then. Gabriel had seen astronauts, had taken his fair share of them while they were on duty. He’d been there once when a man tried to take more than he could on the trip, the argument echoing through the hallway his commander had pulled him into. If given the chance, they'd all bring their entire lives along with them, the way they cast panicked eyes downwards just as they took off. The shuttle would never leave the ground, if they were granted their wish.

So here was a man who even as a child didn't want to bring anything but survival. What did that mean for where Sam had ended up, here where he couldn’t be given even that?

“Your turn,” Sam said. “What did you want to be when you were younger?”

Gabriel looked up, meeting Sam's eyes as they came back from roaming the night. “Human.”

And Sam, sitting there in the darkness, didn’t look as scared of Gabriel as he let those words fill the air. Maybe it was the moon, the stars, the empty mansion Gabriel lived inside. Maybe it was nothing but his imagination, but as the second day turned into the third, Gabriel was thinking about how the moonlight draped Sam in softness like Gabriel hadn’t seen in awhile. Sometimes, that’s all Gabriel ever wanted to be. 

“Can I ask you something else?” Gabriel asked. Sam nodded. “Your dad, he ever…”

“No, he never hit us. He was all wounds with words. So much anger. Used to have to patch up the walls in our house, too. He needed somewhere to swing sometimes.” Sam paused. “Yours?”

“He gets other things to keep us in line. Few clicks of the keyboard, a little thunder, he can take everything we want or need or love. Doesn’t need to do it often.”

He left quickly. Maybe it was because they’d been searching the sky for stars, but Sam’s eyes were looking at Gabriel, searching his face too. Gabriel wasn’t a star, wasn’t something to light the darkness. He was the darkness. Just ask the forest. Just ask the world, dying beneath his feet.


	6. Chapter 6

As morning came, Gabriel made his way to the kitchen, paper in hand scrawled with the thing he thought he learned the most about Sam the day before.  _ Sam Winchester is soft _ he’d written. He wasn’t sure how he’d explain that into something the man would understand, but Gabriel would figure it out.  What he meant was,  _ Sam Winchester didn’t want to leave anything of an abuser in a house of a stranger _ , what he meant was _ Sam Winchester would build a home from scratch on the moon, nothing to remind him of life left behind _ , what he meant was _ Sam will never know the moon loves him back, the way it touches his skin so gently. _ Gabriel read it outright, and Sam made no comment. 

Sam said, “Death can be cruel.” Neither one of them could argue with that, with a touch like his. For existing he was cruel and for doing what he existed to do he was cruel too. It was him, it seemed, all of him, that was cruel. 

They took off for their first soul of the day, this list twice the size of the day before. It would be a long day, and each of them were saving their voices for when they needed to break the silence, the tension, a soul.

When they arrived on the doorstep of a house, at first they couldn’t tell what the problem was. It was still half dark in this part of the world, wherever it was they landed, and the darkness masked the smoke spilling from the cracks in the back of the house. Gabriel opened the door and Sam recoiled from the heat that hit them, and with it smoke surging for the fresh air and spilling into the sky. 

Gabriel started forward into the house, adrenaline rushing through his skin, Sam at his back. The sound of coughing echoed through the smoke-flooded entryway. Souls didn’t cough. Gabriel turned around to stop Sam from coming in further, from inhaling more smoke into his only half-dead lungs. 

“What?” Sam said when Gabriel leveled his gaze in the doorway.

“Stay here,” Gabriel said as Sam started to cough again, the smoke, like the ocean, trying to claim his lungs. The smoke and the ocean didn’t understand just because humans were empty didn’t mean they needed filling.

“It’s okay,” Sam rasped, bent over his knees and chest heaving. “I’m good.”

“I’m not asking. Stay here.”

“I can’t fail, not this early,” Sam said between coughing fits. His heart, his lungs, tried to keep the choking out.

“This won’t count. You’re still part human, Sam. Your lungs still work and this is not a blackness to make a home in your chest.”

Sam dissolved into a coughing fit, eyes watering, and he let Gabriel push him from the house and shut the door, coughing all the while still. Gabriel turned, in the silence, and started into the house, moving through the flames without registering them. His eyes scanned the living room in flames, searching coming up empty. Through one doorway, then another, he found what he was looking for. There was a man engulfed in flame, soul shining from beneath the fire and the light. It was shiningly silver in the flames and came away willingly. Gabriel took his soul quickly, before the flames could lick at that too. 

The man at his side was silent the whole way as they hurried through the house and out the front door to where the neighbors had started to gather and gawk. Sam was still choking, eyes watering, and Gabriel linked hands with him to get them to somewhere with cleaner air.  Sam’s persistent coughing and the sound of muffled footsteps were the only thing accompanying their walk through heaven's halls. 

Before they went on, Gabriel turned to Sam in the hallway just past Cas’s desk. Without a word, he reached out with his hand and held it against Sam’s chest.

“What? What are you-?” Sam staggered away from Gabriel’s hand, but Gabriel rolled his eyes and pressed his hand against Sam’s chest harder, the muscle firm beneath his fingers. He could feel his body heat through his shirt, could feel his lungs screaming. His heart stuttering in his useless panic.They quieted beneath his touch, and Sam frowned, his cough disappearing into nothing but empty air. When he pulled away, Sam wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Can you breathe?” Gabriel asked while Sam’s heart calmed. 

“I’m sorry, I thought-” Sam started. 

“I know what you thought. Can you breathe?”

“Yeah,” Sam took a deep, unhindered breath, “now I can.”

“You’re welcome. Now, let’s get going.”

Sam grabbed onto his hand and Gabriel snapped them to the next location. This time, the silence was not for them saving their voice, but for having too much to say. Neither of them spoke and the day crawled by.

Back at home, with their bedroom doors starting to ease shut by their hands, Sam said, “Gabriel, wait.”

Gabriel nodded, hovering in his doorway while Sam took a breath. “I’m sorry again. I didn’t realize-”

“I know,” Gabriel said. It was alright. Sometimes even he forgot he could heal with his touch too. He was an angel after all, or used to be. Now he was somewhere in between.

“Thank you,” Sam whispered, heart pounding in his newly mended chest. A piece of Sam’s soul shimmered from his fingertips and Gabriel shut his door quickly. The man had pieces everywhere, Gabriel digging them up with his fingers. He’d seen a piece in his chest, his fingers, the back of his neck. But where was the heart of his soul hidden? 

That night, Gabriel heard Sam’s footsteps on the hallway but he breezed past Gabriel’s door, heels heavy against the wood of the stairs. When he didn’t come back up for half an hour, Gabriel went to find him. Night had taken over in full force and it was time to spill their stories to the stars.

Following the sound of breathing in this mansion of nothingness, Gabriel found Sam sitting with his back against the fridge in the kitchen, hunkered below the counters and staring at nothing but the ground. He seemed to seek out the windows, across from him and behind the table were huge ones taking up the wall of white and letting the starlight in. Sam had pushed the curtains away and the tops of the dead trees reached through the night.

“You know there are stars inside you?” Gabriel asked, coming into the room and sitting down, facing Sam against the cabinets, his back to the windows. Sam turned his gaze to Gabriel as he sank down onto the floor. “There are cells inside you in the shape of stars, iron of stars in your blood. That’s the only place they’re living.”

“All the stars out there are dead,” Sam said.  

_ Because of me _ , Gabriel thought but didn’t say. Sam turned back to the window, to the graveyard of stars that sat above, knowing now they were part of him too. Gabriel watched Sam look at the remnants of his destruction and lowered his eyes from the way Sam’s were full of wonder at it all.

“As a kid, I always thought death, dying, was a moment. One minute, you’re alive. The next you’re dead,” Sam said, still looking out the window. “But then, mom got sick, and I realized that wasn’t quite right. It’s a process. Sometimes, you can look at something, someone, and not know they’ve already died.”

Sam turned his head to Gabriel, the reflection of stars dull and dead in his eyes. “Sometimes it’s better not to know why they look so empty.” 

_ Better not to know you’ve touched pieces of the living too _ . Sam stood, walked on socked feet back up to his room and shut the door, leaving Gabriel sitting on the kitchen floor with the emptiness he was used to, and the dead trees reaching up, trying to catch his eyes.

* * *

Cas arrived in the morning to drop off the list and after scanning the room, lingered in the doorway. Sam hadn’t yet emerged from the library downstairs where he’d shut himself in the night before, finally certain sleep didn’t know his name anymore.

“Gabriel, Chuck would like a progress report,” Cas said, easing the door of Gabriel’s room shut behind him. Gabriel spun around in his office chair, frowning.

“Uh, Cassie, not sure if that stick up your ass has finally made it to your brain, but it’s morning. Those don’t come ‘til nighttime. You know, when it’s dark out?”

“No, Gabriel. Chuck wants a report. On Sam.”

“Cas, did you hit your head this morning?”

“He’s worried, Gabriel. He’d like some proof you’re making progress in this deal,” Cas said. He sat on the edge of Gabriel’s bed, dress-shoes stiff on the carpet floor. His hands were laced in his lap and it sent Gabriel itching to move. 

Gabriel stood, started to pace in front of the window as Cas’s head followed him. “He’s never asked for this before.”

“You’ve never had this kind of history with a deal before.”

“That’s not fair.” Something about the way Cas said deal made Gabriel want to scream. Want to show Cas every small piece of Sam’s smile he’d gathered so far and shove it down his throat. That stopped him in his tracks. How long had it been since he stopped using the word ‘deal’ to brand across Sam’s forehead? 

“It is what he commands.”

Gabriel wanted to say fuck off, but he knew it wasn’t Cas’s doing. He instead nodded at Cas, spun around to his desk drawer and found a blank sheet of paper. On it he scribbled what Chuck had asked for, a sentence or two of explanation, and folded it up, pressing it into Cas’s hand. “Tell father dearest I say hello.”

Cas looked up, apologies in his eyes. “We both know that’s not what you want to say.”

“You’re right,” Gabriel said, grinning. “Now fuck right off, Cas.”

“I’ll see you later, Gabriel,” Cas said with a smirk.

Cas left and Gabriel went downstairs to fetch Sam from the library. He knocked twice and sat on the couch to wait for Sam to appear. He did quickly, hair wet, and Gabriel didn’t know when he’d snuck upstairs to shower. Whenever it had been, Gabriel hadn’t noticed his moving at all.

Sam held out his hand and off they went to the first soul of the day.

They appeared on the edge of a shore, rocky sand uneven beneath their feet. Water lapped at their toes, still drawn to them, to Sam, still asking for his soul. A set of mountains stretched up into the sky in the distance, the sun peering above them as it rose for the day. On the water, glinting in Gabriel’s eyesight, a small boat rocked back and forth, back and forth, gentle on the lake. Sam, hand blocking the sun’s light, turned to Gabriel eyebrows raised. Gabriel nodded towards the boat, feeling the soul draw him out there. That’s where the soul waited. 

Sam wrapped his arms around Gabriel’s neck again, and Gabriel flew them both to the middle of the small boat where a man, hunching with the weight of nearly a century, sat beside a boy no taller than Sam the day he’d waded into the ocean to die.

“Like this, yes,” the man was saying, dark and wrinkled hands gentle over the child’s where they wrapped around a fishing pole already cast out into the water.

“Now what Grandpop?” the kid asked, still facing the water. The sunrise met his dark skin and he closed his eyes to bask in the warmth.

“Now, my Luca, we wait.” The man winced as he said this, hand shooting to his shoulder as the heart attack symptoms made themselves known. Turning around, the man noticed Gabriel, Sam behind him, waiting. He peered over his shoulder to find his grandson still waiting with the pole in hand, and he stepped toward the duo of Death with shuffled steps.

“It’s my time, isn’t it?” he asked.

Gabriel nodded, already seeing his soul appear in the palm of the man’s left hand, the one he’d rested on his grandson’s shoulder before while he showed him how to fish. Gabriel turned to Sam, saw the way the sun hit his eyes and lit them aflame with a swirl of green and blue. He was struck, for a moment, by the beauty of it all. The grandfather and his grandchild, hands teaching other hands, the sun finding them all to kiss softly as she woke. He shook the thought from his head, feeling it burrow into his chest despite that, and got back to work.

Gabriel turned back, reached for the man’s soul, only for Sam to wrap his hand around Gabriel’s wrist, grip tight and unyielding.

“Gabriel,” Sam said.

“Not this again.” Gabriel rolled his eyes, trying to shake Sam’s hand from his skin.

“No, Gabriel, look.” Sam was nodding towards the boy on the other end of the boat, but nothing had changed. Only the sun, slightly higher in the sky and directly in his line of vision over the boy’s dark shoulder where it stuck out from a tank top the color of the ocean.

“What is it Sam?” Gabriel sighed.

“Please,” the man whispered, hands clasped in prayer over his chest. He’d met Sam’s eyes and somehow they spoke of things Gabriel was oblivious to. Sam’s hand tightened on his shoulder as Gabriel attempted to take another step forward towards the man. 

“Sam, get off.”

“No, Gabriel.  _ Look _ .” Sam still had his eyes on the boy across the boat, but again he hadn’t moved. 

“I already did. Let go or you’re done.”

“For fucks sake, put aside your ego for one second and  _ look _ at that damn boy sitting there.”

“I. Fucking. Did. Now get out of my way,” Gabriel lowered his voice, thrumming with anger.

“Go,” Sam said to the man, looking past Gabriel without bothering to register the warning he’d sent. 

“Thank you,” he whispered, hurrying to the wheel and starting the engine toward shore. “Reel it in, Luca. We’ve got a picnic to eat.”

“Aww,” Luca groaned, reeling it in regardless. “Can we come back tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” the man said, tears springing in his eyes, “we sure can. Long as you get those chores of yours done for your parents right?” 

“Well, seeing as though you’ve lost your mind and given up the deal, I suppose I’ll let whatever this is happen before sending you back home.” Gabriel sank onto the wooden bench at the end of the boat, wind whipping through his hair. Sam sat beside him, hands tensed and ready to stop him from moving towards the man he was supposed to be taking. “What’s this about?”

“You’ll see,” Sam said, meeting his eye for the first time since they’d arrived. He was earnest, unyielding. Gabriel couldn’t help but wonder at what had overtaken his brain.

When the boat pulled up to the dock and the man tied it to the wooden stump there to stop it from floating away. “Okay, Luca, run along to the picnic. Save me a brownie, would you? You know how I like those.”

“Okay, Grandpop,” Luca called, pulling something from his pocket. It was a stick, slightly longer than his hand. Gabriel frowned, trying to get a better look. Then the boy extended it and he felt the guilt bloom heavy in his gut. Luca felt his way over the boat, using his cane to maneuver his way down the deck, half running in his excitement. It was clear he’d walked these planks hundreds of times, the way he dodged the hole in the wood halfway down despite his diminished eyesight. 

Sam said nothing. It was almost worse that way. Now his grandson was gone, the man stood in front of them without reservation. “I’m Theodore.”

“Sam,” Sam said after Gabriel was silent.

“Thank you, Sam. I’m not sure he would have been able to make it back.”

“I know,” Sam said. “Now, though, we can’t wait any longer I’m afraid.”

Thomas nodded, holding out his hand to shake Sam’s. “Thank you again.”

He turned to Gabriel then, hand outstretched. “And you.”

Gabriel shook it in silence, taking his sunrise-orange soul softly from his palm. “We should go before he, they, come looking for you.”

Theodore’s soul looked out at the sunrise and the water one last time and he followed Gabriel into heaven with a sigh in his pace. The world was no longer heavy on his shoulders and so he stood tall as he walked between them both.

The rest of the day went in a blur. They didn’t speak. When they got back to his house, Sam followed Gabriel into his room, leaving the door wide open. 

“You going to apologize?” Sam asked. 

“Me? Are you?” Gabriel snorted.

“What do I have to be sorry for? I saved that boy’s life!” Sam yelled. If the door had been closed, his anger would have shaken the walls. Instead it slipped from the room and surged through the house, soaking into the carpet to stay.

“Let’s see,” Gabriel started counting on his fingers. He wasn’t yelling, but it was a close thing. “You broke my rules, disregarded my authority. I already warned you about both of those things unless that was all just a trippy dream. You’re luckier than a dog in a graveyard I haven’t sent you back to Earth and taken Ben’s soul already.” 

Sam ran a hand through his hair. “I tried to tell you, Gabriel. You were too caught up in asserting your authority to listen.”

“You are  _ my  _ assistant, you are under  _ my  _ house,  _ my  _ rules. I expect you to listen to them, Sam.”

“You’re just mad I’m not scared of you anymore,” Sam muttered, pacing his half of the room.

“Sam. That boy’s name was not on the list. He would not have died today. But, in addition, it delayed the schedule for the entire day, postponed my helping every soul for another ten to twenty minutes. What if one of them had been a fire? An emergency? Falling? The souls of everyone today suffered to save a boy who didn’t need it simply because you care too much after I warned you not to.”

“Death isn’t the worst thing that could’ve happened to Luca today,” Sam said. There was no anger. He only whispered and stared at the ground.

As he was about to continue, Cas stepped forward in through the doorway. Gabriel had no idea when the flutter of wings was lost amongst the anger and the yelling, had no idea how much Cas would have to take back to Chuck. Cas looked between them, frown on his face. “Should I come back?”

“No, no, come on in Cassie. I don’t have the report done yet, though. Had some other matters to attend to. You’re early.” 

“I know, that’s not why I’m here. I think you know the reason behind the early visit.”

Gabriel lit up. There was a God after all, and he’d received Gabriel’s letter as planned. Feigning innocence for the joy of it, Gabriel asked, “Is this about this morning?”

Cas gave a curt nod, eyes on Sam and then back to Gabriel. Gabriel sighed, “Sam make like Vincent Van and Gogh.”

“But-” Sam blanched.

“Forget how to speak English there Sam? Go.”

Sam stormed from the room, leaving Cas frowning in his wake as he bumped his shoulder breezing past. He had a paper in his hands with creases that matched the paper from this morning and Gabriel let a grin spread across his face. “Cassie, what can I do for you?”

“He’s not happy, Gabriel.” Cas held out the drawing Gabriel drew this morning. The one of the outline of a round soul, middle finger sketched into the blank center.  _ Dear Chuck, fuck you and fuck off. This is my deal to carry out. _ Rereading it, Gabriel dissolved into laughter again.

“Gabriel,” Cas started.

“I know, Cassie. Don’t you think that was the point?”

“You can’t keep doing this. I get caught in the middle of it. It’s a waste of time.”

Gabriel grinned. “Sometimes time needs to be wasted a bit. Helps us all in the end. Besides, you think it’s funny, I can see it beneath all that kiss-ass.”

Cas shook his head, a small smile flashing through his eyes before the frown settled back in. “Gabriel, please. Give me something I can work with.”

Gabriel knew Cas was remembering the thunder the day Chuck almost plucked his wings feather by feather. He softened, but shook his head. “No can do, Cassie. I can show you, but there’s no leaving this room.”

“Possibly that could stave him off for the time being. Anything you can show me, Gabriel.”

“You got to do something for me first,” Gabriel said.

“I can try.”

“Give me a five minutes buffer between deaths, would you?”

“I’ll try,” Cas said without asking the questions Gabriel could see swimming behind his eyes.

“Like I said. Time could use a bit of wasting.”

Cas snorted. “Right.”

“Shut up. And shut the door, if I’m going to show you this.” Cas did and stepped closer, footsteps soft, as Gabriel opened the drawer where he stored the souls he drew. Cas’s breath hitched. 

“What’s this?” Cas asked as Gabriel flipped through his sketchbook. 

“Souls,” Gabriel said. He thumbed through the last few days, pulling out the very first one he’d attempted of Sam’s from the first day he had arrived. He wasn’t about to show Cas the one he drew last night, some of the pieces starting to come together. It was still missing its heart, but these were pieces he didn’t want to give away. Wouldn’t want Chuck too involved, too in the loop. Make him dance a bit. Show him what it was like to be in the dark.

“This here’s where I’m at with Sammykins,” Gabriel held it out. Cas looked at the golden outline, rough and unfinished. 

“I need to see a finished one.” Gabriel grabbed the one he made of the soul from the fire the day before. Cas narrowed his eyes, looking between the two before nodding.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“About this or the extra time?” Gabriel asked.

“Both. I’ll be back with answers when I come for the report. I’ll give you an hour.” He was gone in a flutter.

In Cas’s absence, Sam waited less than a minute before coming into Gabriel’s room again. Less full of fire this time, thankfully. Gabriel shoved the sketches into the top drawer and sat on the desk above the drawer, waiting while Sam’s eyes moved from where he’d hidden them.

“Listen, Sam, I get it, you’re angry. I don’t know what I expected from a man who sat at Ben’s bedside for a majority of his free time. But, you have to understand the danger behind delays.”

“I do, I do. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I saw Luca and I, uh, I saw myself, you know? Lost at sea, left alone. I couldn’t let it happen to him.”

Gabriel froze. Did Sam know it had been him that day? He didn’t think so. But, here he was bringing it up and Gabriel didn’t know how to get through this without the lies spilling. 

“I know. I was there,” Gabriel said, going for nonchalant. Half-truths were truth enough. At Sam’s questioning look he said, “You were a maybe case. Something else happened.”

Sam’s face crumbled for a reason Gabriel couldn’t figure out and he retreated from the room with mumbled excuses. Gabriel listened to him go, sinking into his bed at the end of the whirlwind their day had turned into. He closed his eyes and the hour melted away until Cas was back, arrival punctuated by a louder flutter than usual. Making sure Sam and Gabriel weren’t fighting again, most likely.

“Five minutes,” Cas said. “That’s all you get.”

Gabriel opened his eyes, sitting up from where he’d flopped on the bed. “Thanks Cas. Report’s on the table.”

He’d scribbled it out messily and didn’t bother with the envelope. It wasn’t worth the effort, not after today.

“See you tomorrow, Gabriel.”

Gabriel sighed, scraping his hand over his face and swinging his legs out of bed. He stood, listening to the sound of Sam’s heart to find where he’d ended up in the house. It sounded like the ground floor, so he made his way down the stairs and paused to listen to it thud at the bottom of the stairs. The library. 

Peering through the crack in the open door, he found Sam curled up in a maroon chair in the corner by the windows, feet tucked beneath himself and reading a book. His fingers were long, soft as he flipped the page and Gabriel found himself watching for a moment too long. To glimpse a piece of his soul. That’s the reason for his lingering. Not because Sam looked the softest he’d been since he showed up here.

“Sam?” Gabriel said, still in the doorway.

Sam looked up, shutting the book in his hands and moving to put it away. “It's alright, Sam. You can touch anything you want here.”

Sam sank back down, back stiff and legs too. Where had the softness gone?

“What do you remember from that day?” Gabriel asked, after sliding onto the windowsill near Sam’s chair.

“The color gold, warmth, bruises.” Sam sighed. “Wanting to die.”

Gabriel had held him too hard, the bruises forming around his arms where Gabriel had lifted him above water had taken weeks to fade. Gabriel knew because he had checked on him. He had to. Had to make sure Sam was okay. A small part of him lingered, trying to find where in Sam he’d seen anything worth all the trouble he’d gotten himself into. “Because your mother was gone?”

Sam shrugged. “It was more than that. I think I knew at the time what my father would become without her. I just didn't know how to prevent that. He always liked Dean more. Dean didn't have my mother’s mouth. But I did. I thought maybe if all the memories of her were gone, he wouldn't have such a hard time coping.”

“In my experience, that's never true. There are always reminders.”

Sam gave a curt nod. He waved his hand, brushing the topic away. “Why do you stay?”

“I’ve been doing this for too long. I don't know how to deal with anything but the dead.”

Gabriel stood to go back upstairs. At the door, Sam called out. “Wait.”

“What’s up?” Gabriel turned.

“Do you know what saved me?” Gabriel nodded, kept his lips shut. “Was it an angel?”

Gabriel nodded again. “Sure was.”

“Do you know who it was?” Sam’s voice was gentle from across the room.

“Yeah.”

“Can I meet them? While I’m here? You’ve got connections don’t you?”

It felt like getting punched in the gut for a reason Gabriel couldn’t explain, but he pretended to think for a moment and pushed the pain down until he could deal with it. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” Sam said. “I’d like to ask them why. Maybe this was all part of God’s plan.”

Gabriel left, didn’t think he could see Sam look so hopeful at meeting the angel that had saved him. What would he think, if he found out it had been Death? It would shatter the hope in his eyes to pieces. There was no plan of God’s to have saved Sam.


	7. Chapter 7

Gabriel appeared in the hallway of the maternity ward of the hospital, Sam’s hand in his own. Cries of the newborns shattered the air and Sam flinched at his side. Life knew just how to punch him, just how to shatter his eardrums and his heart. If he had one, of course. Gabriel wasn't allowed that privilege. 

Sam’s breath caught as they breezed past the window where the babies lay swaddled and separated. As he paused to peer in, each and every one of them started to cry and flail inside the glass. They knew Death was near, and so they cried. The nurses inside were frantic, looking between each other with wide-eyes and panicking hands. 

Gabriel picked up the pace, Sam falling into line close at his heels. There was doing his job and then there was cruelty.  They did not belong here, in this place where life began. 

“What are we doing here?” Sam whispered.

“Our job.”

“But...here?”

Gabriel shrugged. There was no reason to waste his breath. There was death everywhere, even here, though he too wasn’t a fan of it. 

They rounded the corner, Gabriel stopping in the doorway of a hospital room where a woman lay with a baby wrapped pink in her arms. The woman’s head lolled back against the pillows, but she clutched the child tight to her chest.

“Which one?” Sam asked, voice wavering.

Gabriel searched the room, looking for the soul he was supposed to take. From the bottom of the woman’s feet, a soul emerged. “Mother. Her name’s Lena. The doctor’s haven’t caught the complication in time. Too much bleeding. They don’t know why.”

Sam let out his breath, a guilty relief, and Gabriel stepped into the room. As if she’d heard their silent footsteps, Lena snapped up, eyes alert and on Gabriel where he stood just feet from the doorway. She started to shake her head. “Please.”

Beside her, in a recliner much too small for his frame, her husband looked towards where her eyes were cast and saw nothing but the empty doorway. “Sweetheart, what is it?”

“Please, just a few more minutes.”

“Want me to tell the nurses to come back later?” Lena’s husband asked. Still she didn’t take her eyes off Gabriel in the doorway.

Gabriel glanced back to Sam before holding up five fingers. He wiggled them and Lena nodded with a silent thank you on her lips. He turned, and Sam followed heavy heeled as Gabriel breezed from the room. “I thought we couldn’t give more time.”

Gabriel shrugged. “Thought about it. Asked Chuck to give me a five minute buffer for things like this.”

“So, you’re I was right?” Sam asked, grinning his dimpled grin. 

“Oh really, that’s what we’re doing now? Son, didn’t your momma ever tell you not to flirt with Death?”

“Or what?” Sam said, still beaming. “I’m already half-dead.”

It came out bitter and the teasing tone was gone from them both. “Touche, kiddo, touche.”

They sat in the plastic chairs outside Lena’s room while the clock ticked away at her extra time. Gabriel tried to tune out the murmurs of love she was flooding the baby with, but it seeped through and through, to his heart. He felt heavy. None of this was fair. From Sam’s bent back beside him, he could guess he was feeling the same. 

Nurses came and took the baby into the nursery and as her husband went to get them both coffee from the machine down the hall, Gabriel took the empty room as time. 

“Do you want me to wait for him to come back?” Gabriel asked as he approached her bedside.

She shook her head. “It’s better I’m gone before...”

She didn’t want to see him see her. Gabriel understood. There were only so many times you could witness a heart breaking. Especially of someone you once loved.

“Thank you,” she said as Gabriel gently lifted her hand, soft in his own, and her soul gave way, the color of sunsets and the size of a penny from her foot. It pulsed like a heartbeat, strong and sure even after they left her by Chuck’s door.

In the next, they landed in a room painted pink. On the bed was a little girl, no older than seven, buried amongst her stuffed animals and princess blankets. Beside her, on the nightstand, was a slew of bottles and pills. She was sick. That’s all there was to it. On the TV, a monster truck rally flashed silently and she watched through heavy-lidded eyes, hair flat against her head.

Her parents were dozing in sleeping bags in the hallway, ready to wake up at any sign of discomfort. They had already said their goodbyes too many times over. Comfort was the only goal left.

“Hello,” she said when they approached. “Who are you?”

“I’m Gabriel and this here’s Sammy,” Gabriel said, crouching down by the bed so the girl wouldn’t have to crane her neck so high. “What’s your name?”

“Kelly. Why are you here?”

“Well, Kelly, we’re here to take you to Heaven.”

“So it stops hurting like mommy said?” 

“Yeah, honeybee, like mommy said,” Gabriel whispered. Tears started to well in her eyes and he let his wings flutter open. “Hey, hey, tell me something will you? I can’t seem to remember, silly me. Tell me, what color are my wings?”

She blinked away the tears blocking her vision and reached out to bury her fingers in the feathers. “Pink.”

“Wha-” Sam started at his shoulder but Gabriel cut him off with a flip of his hand. They’d deal with that later.

“How do they feel?” Gabriel asked.

“Tickles,” the girl said. “Are we going to fly to Heaven?”

“If you want to we can,” Gabriel said. At her nodding, Gabriel nodded too. “That’s what we’ll do. Ready to go?”

“I guess so, kinda wanted to see who won first though,” she said, eyes on the TV. 

“Let’s watch the end, then,” Sam offered. 

“Can we?” Kelly asked, looking at Gabriel. He nodded and she let a smile spread across her face.

“Come sit with me,” Kelly said, holding out her hands to pull Gabriel onto the bed beside her, gesturing for Sam to climb in too after. There was hardly enough room for them, Sam ending up tucked against Gabriel’s side. He started to slide from the bed, so Gabriel wrapped one arm around him, fingers meeting the warm skin of his back where his shirt rode up. Just so he wouldn’t fall.

They watched the carnage on screen in silence, Gabriel resisting the urge to rub circles into the skin of Sam’s back, the urge to push his shirt up and up and up and touch and touch and touch. 

“Am I crushing your wing?” Sam whispered into Gabriel’s ear. He was inches from Gabriel and the warmth was intoxicating.

“No, no, you’re good kiddo,” Gabriel replied. “You’re warm.”

He hadn’t meant to let that last part slip, and he froze as he said it. Sam opened his mouth to respond, Gabriel focusing his gaze on the TV and the TV alone. The rally ended just then, and Kelly sat up. 

“Okay, time to go,” Gabriel said, springing up from the bed before remembering Sam was weighing down his wing. He winced at the way it tugged against his back and Sam started muttering apologies instantly. He scrambled up, graceful even in this, and his long fingers ran through the feathers of Gabriel’s wing, gentle.

“Did I hurt you?” Sam asked, voice wavering. Two feathers lay against the sheets of Kelly’s bed and he scooped them up in his soft fingers. 

“Sammy, it’s cool.”

Sam’s hands ran through his wing again, feeling along the spine of his wing, all the while watching Gabriel’s face for a wince. 

“Really, Sam. I’m good.” He turned from Sam’s puppy dog eyes to Kelly who waited at the door. “Ready?”

She nodded and they walked through the house, invisible, to the glass back door. Kelly yanked it open and out the trio spilled into the browning grass of the backyard. Gabriel, in the open air, let his wings unfurl again. 

“Come back for me once you’re done,” Sam offered as they looked between each other, trying to figure out how to arrange everyone for the trip. Gabriel nodded, letting Kelly wrap her arms around his neck against his stomach, legs hooking around his waist. This way she could look over his shoulder at his wings as they flapped. He led her into Chuck’s office and went back to Sam. On the lawn of the girl’s house, they linked hands beneath the stars.

“Let’s go home, Gabe” Sam said. 

To their shared home they went.

* * *

Later that night, Gabriel sitting at his desk, the sound of Sam’s footsteps echoed against the staircase, against the floor of the living room. He thought nothing of it until the sound of a turning knob echoed through the house. That could only mean one thing and he flew from his seat without stashing his sketchbook of souls, without shutting the door.

“Stop!” Gabriel yelled, hurtling down the stairs to find Sam, hand on the knob to his green-room, frozen at the sudden, sunset thunder. “Don’t!”

“What?” Sam asked. Still his hand stayed on the knob. 

“You can’t open the door,” Gabriel said, lunging for Sam’s hand.

“Why not?” Sam asked, unmoving.

“If you do,” Gabriel started, even as Sam turned the knob and the door clicked open. It was too late. “Everything will die.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed and he stepped into the room of overgrowth and vine. “It’s dying anyway, look at it. The overgrowth is choking it to death.”

“But, my breath, my touch. It’ll die in an instant.”

“No, it won’t,” Sam said rolling his eyes, and scanned the room, taking the mess in. “Hasn’t died yet.”

Gabriel held his breath, held his body still, tried not to even blink. Part of him thought maybe he could save the life that had taken root there if he didn’t breathe ever again. The other part knew it had already breathed him in. It was already doomed to die.

Inside, Sam ignored Gabriel’s freak out through the glass and started to tug the weeds from the ground with his bare hands. When he looked back up from the ever-growing pile at his side to see Gabriel still staring through the glass windows, he sighed and stood, brushing the dirt from his hands onto his jeans and, without a word, breezed past Gabriel and into the kitchen. He reemerged with a wooden chair in his arms, the one Gabriel had tucked into the corner for no reason but to get it out of his way in the office, and Sam walked it into the corner of the green-room. He set it down in the dirt and looked at Gabriel through the glass, hands on his hips.

“There. Sit if you want, go if you don’t. I’m fixing this mess,” Sam said, wiping the hair from where it had fallen into his face.

Sam went back to work, Gabriel back to staring and trying to be as lifeless as possible. Oh, what they would say about the irony. Another ten minutes passed, Sam stopping every other minute to push the hair from his face where it fell into his eyes, and Gabriel couldn’t see any major browning, only shriveling near the doorway and minimal at that. 

Sam came out for a glass of water and Gabriel stopped him before he went back in.

“Here,” Gabriel said, reaching out. This time, Sam didn’t flinch. Not as Gabriel tugged Sam down into a kneeling position, as Gabriel let his fingers trail through Sam’s hair. Not as Gabriel’s fingers scratched against his scalp, as Gabriel tied his hair back into a bun on top of his head with one of the hair ties he carried on his wrist. Sometimes the dying wanted that kind of comfort too. It helped to be prepared.

When Gabriel was done, Sam turned around and grinned. “Thanks. Now sit or go. Don’t hover like-”

“Death, yeah. Good one.” Gabriel rolled his eyes and stood at the windows still while Sam got to work again, hands buried beneath all the green. After a few minutes without the signs of death he had expected, Gabriel took a step forward, toes in the doorway. Around the doorframe, the vines that flowered there shrank away. Sam didn’t look up. Letting him make a decision without any input. 

Not wanting the flowers to die all the way, Gabriel hurried through the room and to the corner where Sam had planted the wooden chair. It was the emptiest, after all. Even there the flowers shrank, closed up, shriveled. Gabriel kept his eyes down even after he could feel Sam’s gaze on him. 

“It’s spring,” Sam said, making conversation. Behind them both, the glass walls let the spring sunset in, shades of orange and yellow cloaking the sky. “I forgot.”

In his hands was a flower, pale pink and blooming.  _ It’s you, _ Gabriel wanted to say.  _ You brought the warmth, the spring. Oh in your absence how all of this will die again. _ Sam plucked another flower from the ground, already detached from it’s stem, and approached Gabriel in his chair. 

Gabriel, as he came near, leaned back and back, shying away from the life in his palm. “No. I’ll kill it.”

“It is already dead,” Sam said and, with gentle fingers brushed Gabriel’s hair. He met Gabriel’s eyes as he tucked the flower behind Gabriel’s ear. “Pretty,” he murmured, turning back to the greenery still living. 

Gabriel shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t have come at all. He made to leave but Sam interrupted his freak out. “How did this all get here?”

Gabriel sighed, settled back into his chair. “At first, I didn’t know. When I moved in, there was nothing growing at all. It was just a room full of dirt and glass. But as the years went on, sprouts started to grow. I thought, maybe, it was for me. It was a place that I could touch something living and not do damage. A way to scratch that itch. But, after only a touch or two, the room shriveled. Died. It was something else. Metatron wouldn’t tell me.

“When Chuck came back, I asked him. He said, in gentler words, that when I became Death, I lost the heart that angels carry. Not one for blood, but one all the same. He never did tell me why he made us with them, if we didn’t need them to survive. Metatron buried mine in here, somewhere, and the plants feed on it to survive.”

“Do you need it back?” Sam asked, fingernails ready to dig.

Gabriel shook his head. “No. I like being able to see the life grow here. It’s as good a reminder as it being in my own chest. Wouldn’t be able to put it back anyway” 

A reminder of what he could do with a touch. Kill his own heart with a fingertip. “Just be careful,” Gabriel said.

“Of course,” Sam said. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“What’s happening with me, with Ben, back home?”

“It’s kind of weird. There are two different timelines playing out at once right now. In the one where you win this deal, Ben’s started to heal. He’ll be going back home, going back to school. Living his life. In the one when you fail, you are business as usual while Ben declines further.”

Sam nodded. “Can I ask you something else?”

“You don’t have to ask me if you can ask a question, just ask.”

Sam snorted. “Why’d that girl say your wings were pink?”

“My wings reflect the viewer’s soul,” Gabriel said. “So, what color do you see, Sammy?” 

Gabriel figured Sam would catch the joke, the obvious attempt at more information. He expected snark back and a change of subject. But, Sam replied with confusion laced in his voice.

“Gold, Gabe.” Sam said, the nickname resting gently over Gabriel’s chest along with the softness of Sam’s voice. “I see gold.”

* * *

The next morning, Gabriel came downstairs to find Sam crouched on the ground. He had his finger extended, and he was talking to something softly. Gabriel hovered in his doorway, listening to the words he could catch, now he knew to listen.

“Now, now, little guy, let’s get you outside. This is no place for you,” Sam said. He went to the green-room and opened the door, letting the ladybug he’d found on the tile flutter into the plants and get lost.

“Hey,” Gabriel said. Sam jerked up. 

“Morning,” Sam said. He scratched the back of his neck, “Found a ladybug.”

“Good to get it out of my way, right?” Gabriel asked and pretended it didn’t hurt a bit to imagine Sam admitting that out loud. He couldn’t control his touch, but still it pained him.

“It’ll be good for your plants,” Sam said, but he was wincing at his words even then. Gabriel shook his apologetic look off.

“Cas just came. Got some bad news, Sam.”

“What is it?”

“There’s been an earthquake.” They were needed immediately, the buildings still crumbling in the aftermath. “I’m going to need you to start claiming souls today.”

Sam nodded. “Okay. What do I do?”

“Well, you've seen me do it. Grab their hand and you should feel their soul now that you’re my assistant. It’ll be a thrumming beneath their skin. Energy. All you have to do is tug on that and it’ll spring free nine times out of ten.”

“What happens if it doesn’t come free?”

“You let me know and I’ll take care of it. Right now, there are just too many for me to get on my own. Usually Chuck would come down, but since I have you he said you’ve got to do it instead. Think you can handle it?”

“Yeah, I think so. What do I do with the souls once I’ve got them?”

“Bring them to me and I’ll send them onward.”

“That’s not fair,” Sam protested.

“That’s death. We just don’t have the time. It’ll probably take two days as it is to get all of the ones assigned to me, to us. We’ve got to get started yesterday.” Gabriel held out his hand. Sam took it, his hand trembling. 

They landed in chaos and Gabriel started to thrum. As much as the silence of his home was where he belonged, this, too, was his home. In the smoke and destruction. In the screaming of humanity. It’s where he’d always lived.

Beneath his feet, the ground was uneven, covered in the debris of buildings half-crumbled. This used to be a street, where they stood. Instead there was the remains of the buildings that used to stand on either side, homes from the looks of the pieces still upright. Sam’s breath caught and Gabriel understood. It was his first time seeing this kind of destruction from this end, from the eyes of someone knowing which of these panicked people would die. 

Not two feet in front of them, a soul glowed from beneath the rubble. “Okay, Sam. Watch how I get this one and then we’ll split. Ask any questions you need to. This is your only chance.”

Gabriel crouched down in the rubble, asphalt scratching at the knees of his black jeans, asking for blood. He had none to give and so he ignored it. Using his fingers to move the rubble from the body that had been crushed, Gabriel found the soul shining and vibrant white in all the ash and soot. With things like this, the souls come away easy. They, too, know there is no time. 

“Like this,” Gabriel said, reaching down to tug the soul by the piece he could reach in one hand. It came away and hovered in his palm, the outline of the person in the rubble appearing beside it. Gabriel snapped his left hand and both disappeared in an instant, sent to Chuck’s door. “You get as many as you can, then come find me. I’ll be singing something. You might want to think about doing the same.”

“Why?”

“It helps with the screaming.” Sam looked stricken, but Gabriel figured he should let him know in advance. They would make their way into the center of the city and then the screaming would be deafening. Glass shattering. Souls calling for help.

Gabriel sent Sam to walk the outskirts of town for the start of their day. It would be easier, without all the chaos, to deal with what he’d been asked. He wanted to be with him, wanted to be able to coach him through his first soul at least and then take him home to grieve, but it was not in the cards. Not Sam’s. 

Gabriel tried to push thoughts of Sam from his head and got to work, headed toward the center of town where buildings still came crashing to the ground as the earthquake sent aftershocks to rattle them all. The Earth trying to shake the heaviness of humans and what their hands made from her back, it seemed. Gabriel knew how heavy a soul could be. Couldn’t imagine billions of them. Still, that was no excuse for the destruction she’d caused.

He started to hum as he pulled soul after soul from the rubble, the skin of his fingers splitting open before he could heal them back together. After a while, he let them split and left them. It was a waste of energy to reheal them every time. Plus, he had no blood to spill so what was the point? 

Two souls turned into ten and Gabriel scanned as far as he could see, counting twenty souls within sight but still no Sam Winchester. Where had he gone, in all this mayhem?

Gabriel sighed, started back towards where they had split up with a roaming gaze, using the opportunity to scoop up any souls he’d missed this far out. He’d stopped to gather a pair by a streetlight fallen, when Sam appeared, an army of souls marching at his back. Some were talking to each other, laughing in the face of Death. Gabriel laughed back at the sight of Sam Winchester, hair matted with dirt and hands full of souls, grinning as he led them to Gabriel’s hands. As they drew nearer, Gabriel could hear them, all of them, singing something soft and gentle. A lullaby. A comfort.

The singing of the souls continued even as Sam got close enough and started to speak. “Hey,” he said, “I have an idea.”

“Don’t have much time, but lay it on me.”

“What if we sent them back to the mansion? We could do one last wish for each and then send them to heaven.”

Gabriel thought about fingers on his things, on his desk, on the sketches of Sam’s soul. It sent his stomach churning, wings itching at his back. He looked at Sam, though, with the devastation in his eyes and the souls clutched tight in his fingers, pleading close on his tongue, and he nodded. “They get one wish, nothing crazy. Then onward. We have a little over one hundred on our list for today, probably around there for tomorrow. Chuck’s got the guardian angels flocking around here too. The mansion can hold one hundred, right?”

Sam looked like he’d swallowed the sun, the way he grinned and the world brightened around him. “Thank you.”

It was like he’d shed the weight of the souls, the way he stood straighter in front of Gabriel. Gabriel winked. “Anytime, Sammy.”

He wasn’t surprised by the thanks he got, not the grin from Sam nor the relief he felt. He was, however, surprised by the arms that wrapped around him and the way he was suddenly pulled tight against Sam’s chest. His heart was beating steadily beneath his skin and Gabriel sank into it. It had been centuries since he was this close to a heart without breaking it, without killing it with a breath. Sam’s soul shined beneath his skin, the way his smile had, strong and vibrant over his heart and Gabriel wanted so desperately not to have seen it. He’d pretend he didn’t and there was no one to say otherwise.

“Thank you Gabe,” Sam whispered again, this time closer. So close his breath tickled his ear and Gabriel felt something in his chest unfurl, a fist releasing to soft fingers, a breath let out. He pulled away from the hug, dizzy, and Sam had already turned back to the army waiting behind him. From the looks of it, it appeared he’d grabbed more souls than Gabriel had so far. They just might be done before the day here turned into night.

“Hear that guys? You’ve got yourselves a wish. Just one, don’t get too crazy. We’re sending you to our house to wait until we can help you, okay? Make yourselves at home,” Sam called. There was applause and cheer and Sam turned back to Gabriel who’d composed himself in his invisibility. 

“We’re not going to have a break tonight,” Gabriel warned. No time to grieve for them.

The applause still strong, Sam shrugged. “That’s fine with me.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I am.”

“Okie dokie. Folks you heard the man, to our house you go. No touching the bedroom at the top of the stairs or the garden room, but everything else is free reign.”

Gabriel snapped and they all landed in their living room to wait for the day to finish and bring them back. He turned to Sam, no longer surrounded in the crowd of gray outlined souls. “Okay, we’re around a quarter done. I’m going to keep going to the center, you keep doing what you’re doing.”

Standing there, in the sun now well into the morning, Sam looked so small. He nodded.

“You okay?” Gabriel asked.

Sam shrugged, on the edge of shattering. “Doesn’t matter much. They need us.”

“Yeah. Yeah they do. Let’s go save some souls.”

Sam smiled in the sunlight, patting Gabriel's shoulder with his hands still warm from the souls, and they split up once again. This time, it was easier to get lost in it, now he knew Sam could handle himself. Gabriel scolded himself for doubting Sam to begin with. He'd always been able to handle anything Gabriel threw at him, ready to bite back if he thought Gabriel had his teeth out. 

Gabriel found soul after soul, some still asking for help, others still and silent, slipping from their bodies with an ease that had Gabriel chilled to the bone. They'd been here too long. Soon they would start to rot and the afternoon sun would not help things.

After one hour turned into two and Gabriel started to hum along to anything that popped into his brain, the center of the city growing louder and louder, he was interrupted.

_ Gabriel, I’ve got twenty or so. Where do you want me to take them? _

_ Show me where you are, I’ll fly. Make things easy. _

Sam showed him the remains of a building Gabriel could see miles away. He hadn’t realized he’d gone that far, either of them. The distance between them was huge, but he covered it in a flutter. Sam handed him the mountain of souls and he snapped them to their home in a moment. Turning to go, Gabriel caught sight of Sam’s hands.

“Sammy, wait,” Gabriel said, grabbing one of Sam’s hands in his own. His fingers were tattered, blood weeping from the wounds and staining all the way to his wrist. Gabriel breathed on them and Sam was wincing already. How had he been digging these souls up, with his hands tattered like this?

“It’s fine. Let’s get back to work,” Sam said, pulling away.

“No, Sam. This is not fine. This’ll only take a moment,” Gabriel said. He muttered about self-sacrificing bastards as he lifted Sam’s fingers to his lips and pressed them to the tips of each of Sam’s fingers finger, leaving them healed as he moved onto the next. “Other hand.”

Sam reluctantly gave up his other hand, watching as Gabriel healed his fingers with the gentlest brush of his lips on Sam’s skin. Softer than the ladybug had been. Softer than the sun. 

“There. I threw a little something extra so they won’t split like that again for a while.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Yes I did. And Sam?”

“Hmm?”

“Tell me next time you’re hurting. That’s an order.”  _ I’ll fix it, all of it, for you _ . 

“Fine,” Sam said and started down the road to dig more souls up from the ashes of the city that had once been their home. Gabriel flew back to where he’d been, sweeping down in long strokes to pull souls from inside of buildings not yet crumbled or ones he had missed before. There was a magenta one shaped like a cloud on the third story of an office building, a thin line of sea-kelp green lost beneath what once had been a two story house. None of them fought him. In times like this, they never did. 

Two more trips to take the souls from Sam’s hands and one more sweep over the city with Sam in his arms while the sun sank down, they finished their list for the day and turned homeward to a mansion thrumming with life. They hadn’t taken a step before voices, a flood, called out for them. Last wishes, complaints, it all hit Gabriel in the chest and he shut that shit down in an instant.

“Enough. For fuck’s sake, this is our home. You will do as we say, capiche? You get one last wish. Nothing grand. No extra time, no saving other people. Want to say goodbye? Fine. One last call? Great. Want a damn chocolate bar? You can have two. If you think it’s too much, it probably is. Don’t have a last wish? Stand on that patio and I’ll send you straight up. 

“For those of you who do have a wish, you will split up amongst yourselves between myself and Sammy here. We will call you in one by one, do what we can, and send you onward. We have to get you all done by daybreak, so have your wish ready. If you’re not ready, you get nothing and up you go. Now, any questions? No? Great. Split up.”

Sam followed Gabriel upstairs, pushing through the throng of souls that had gathered amongst the hallways. 

“I need you to get as much information as possible. If they want to make a call, it’ll appear as if they made it before the earthquake hit. Use the phone on your nightstand. They need to dial 9 first and it’ll go through anywhere. If they want to leave a note, have them write it on scrap paper from their pockets and I’ll snap it to the location of their choosing. Get that location from them, their name, and the note and make sure it all stays together. If something’s questionable, pray it to me or make the decision yourself. I trust you.”

“Got it,” Sam said, immediately going down to his floor and pointing to a soul near his door. “You, come on in.”

Gabriel grinned at his straightforwardness and called his own first soul to follow him inside his room. “Shut the door behind you if you want any privacy.”

The petite girl with dark hair to her waist did just that and stood with her back against it, facing him. She was in her early twenties, from the looks of it, and she glowed with her youth.

“Alright, what can I do for you?” Her soul was the red of fire in her chest and Gabriel could hear it in her voice.

“I always did want to touch the sun,” she said with a glint in her eye.

“So did Icarus. What do you really want?”

“That hottie downstairs up for grabs?” She asked. “Or are you two exclusive?”

“Oh we’re not-he’s not-” Gabe started. “What I mean is, I’d like to see you try.”

She grinned at his response. “Hmm,” she said. Then, “Phone call, please.”

Gabriel handed over his phone. “You don’t strike me as a softie. Mom, dad, husband?”

“Girlfriend, thank you.” She had daggers in her eyes to match the fire in her soul and Gabriel felt a warmth in his chest for the spitfire she appeared to be. The thing is, Gabriel broke his rules. He loved each and every soul he touched. And it burned him like that girl’s soul each and every day. 

He listened to her say goodbye to the forever she had promised, knowing it hadn’t yet ended for the girl on the other line. 

“I love you enough,” she said.

“To fill the sky,” the girl on the other end said. It shattered something in Gabriel’s chest. Something he swore fed the garden downstairs and lived in his chest no longer. 

“Alright, gramps. Here you go. Now I’m ready.” She held out the phone and her hand too. 

“What’s your name?” Gabriel asked. 

“June,” she said. “My mother called me Junebug.”

Gabriel took her hand and sent her to heaven’s door, feeling drained already. He shook it from his bones and called the next soul in.

He went through three more phone calls, one request to pet a dog, and a moment to pray for a person whose God was of a different form before he decided to peek in on Sam to make sure all was well. 

His door was partially cracked and Gabriel eased it wide enough to peer into the room, the hallway now empty of the souls that had been hovering. They all had settled in to wait somewhere softer than the railing and the walls, sprawling on the couch and through the library. Inside, a young girl around fifteen was draped in a dress threaded with sparkles, navy blue and sky-light, arms on Sam’s shoulders as he swayed them back and forth in a circle. There was no music, and after a moment, Gabriel started to sing softly to fill the silence. 

Sam’s eyes snapped to Gabriel in the doorway as his voice found them, but Gabriel just nodded and he continued spinning the girl around and around until her time was up. Gabriel took her by hand to Chuck’s door, letting her keep the dress Sam had scrounged up from somewhere in the house.

“All she wanted was a prom dance,” Sam said when Gabriel got back and pulled the door behind him.

“You done good kid,” Gabriel said. “Girl was lucky to get a dance partner that looks like you anyway. Bit too tall for her though.”

Sam split into a grin. “She had to stand on my feet just to reach.”

“Hey, less work that way,” Gabriel said.

“Is moving your feet really that much work?” Sam asked, grinning.

“Partner’s got to be worth it. You? I might consider using one foot.”

“Damn, what’s a man got to do to get both around here?”

“I can think of a few things.”

Gabriel pretended to ignore the blush tinting Sam’s cheeks and the tips of his ears. Pretended to ignore the way his soul appeared in the hollow of his throat. Sam cleared his throat, turned away to his desk, to the stack of papers that sat there. “Got two notes to deliver. Want them now?”

“Sure, I’ll send them on.”

Sam handed them over and Gabriel read the address before snapping them to where they needed to be, picturing the location in his mind to make sure it was delivered safely. Once, he hadn’t been concentrating close enough and the note ended up in the bottom of a fish tank in the apartment next door. He learned his lesson real quick after that. Then he hadn’t needed the lesson at all, didn’t get distracted enough for it to happen again. Until Sam.

“You good?” Sam asked Gabriel when he opened his eyes again.

“‘Course, Sammy. I’m always good.”

They parted ways again, not coming back together until every soul was gone, wishes granted. It took hours, until the sun was already coming back up and they had only enough time to breathe in a cup of coffee each before going back for more. Gabriel didn’t really need it, but his mind was exhausted so maybe the plastic tasting caffeine would help.

“Well, Sam, what’d you learn about me today?” Gabriel asked around the rim of his mug.

“Death is kind.” Sam met his eyes and didn’t let go and it felt like eternities melting away.

“Funny,” Gabriel said, “I was going to say the same thing about you.”


	8. Chapter 8

If the first day seemed to stretch forever, the second dragged even longer. This time, they knew what lay ahead with the wishes they’d be granting until sunrise. This time, the list was almost twice as long.

“Sam, you need to ask them if they have a last wish before sending them back to the mansion. If we send them all first and ask later we’ll run out of time.”

“Sure thing. See you in a bit.”

Today, there were no more aftershocks, only the rubble and the souls that had died in the night. They were at the heart of it all and Sam and Gabriel each sang loudly, trying to drown out the sound of screaming souls and the smell of the beginning of rot. It was bitter, acidic, slipping into their lungs. The singing did nothing to stop them from seeing the destruction, the pain and the tears and the blood, but it helped somehow. It helped. 

By the time Gabriel took them both home, Sam was dragging, his fingers splitting open despite the magic Gabriel had tried to press there. He healed Sam again and again and heard the way he swallowed against the stutter of his heartbeat each time Gabriel met his eyes while his lips were on Sam’s skin.

Doling out wishes took until the sun was already shattering the sky and Cas arrived before the last ones were done. 

“Chuck gave you two the day off. He, we, thank you for all this.”

“Nice. Hear that Sammy? We got freedom,” Gabriel called down the hallway. A small cheer floated up and Gabriel grinned.

“Also,” Cas said, “he would like an update on Sam.” 

The relief of freedom fell by the wayside. Gabriel felt his chest stutter at the thought of giving up any part of Sam, wanting to keep him close and to himself. But if he gave none, Chuck would take everything. Cas, across the room, raised his eyebrows.

“Fine,” Gabriel sighed, going to the drawer to pull out a sketch of Sam’s soul not nearly close to complete and flashed it at Cas. “There. Happy?”

“Not really.” Cas left quickly and Gabriel went back to granting wish after wish. As the last soul left, Gabriel made his way downstairs to Sam’s room to find the door still shut. Must have a straggler. Gabriel sank down against the wood of the door across the hall from Sam’s to wait.

Gabriel tapped his fingers against his thigh as he waited, not looking up when the door clicked. “Hey Samo, got any idea what to do with all our extra time tomorrow?”

“Gabriel. I need to talk to you.” It was Cas. Cas coming out of Sam’s room. Gabriel frowned, following Cas back upstairs to his room where he shut the door behind Gabriel.

“What are you still doing here?” Gabriel asked.

“He’s asking who saved him, Gabriel.” 

“What’d you tell him?”

“I told him to ask you. I didn’t know if you wanted him to know what you had done.” Gabriel had never felt the urge to fling his arms around Cas more than at that moment.

“I’ll take care of it. Thanks Cas,” Gabriel said, already on the edge of a story he could craft of half truths and soothing. Anything to get Sam to drop it. Anything to keep the hope there in his eyes.

The sound of scribbling, pencil etching paper, shattered the silence that followed the finishing of souls and Cas’s departure. Gabriel hasn't even noticed in his concentration, until the pencil started to screech from below. They’d finished their job and Sam, in his room, started to write. Gabriel tuned it out, going back to the story he planned to tell until the sound of something glass-like and clinking drifted up to him. Sam's door clicked open just after and he pushed away the itch to investigate. That was Sam’s room. He wouldn't leave his touch there too.

Gabriel put away the sketchbook he'd been filling with messy and hurried souls of the hundreds he’d touched in the last two day as Sam made his way upstairs, trading it for a blank sketchbook to doodle in from the drawer. He drew long-fingered hands and the hollow of a throat as Sam flopped onto his bed.

“How do you want the world to end?” Sam asked, hands over his eyes. 

“Don’t much care,” Gabriel said.  _ Only that it ends and takes me with it _ .

Sam sat up, blinking away the exhaustion from his eyes. “You have to pick. Fire or ice.”

“Touching souls feels like burning and I’ve touched millions. Ice, I suppose. You?”

“I think mine’s already done,” Sam said. And Gabriel could think of hundreds of ways to make that happen, thousands flashing through his mind in less than a second. It would take less than a whisper to send his soul to heaven without a backwards glance. A touch. A brush against Sam’s skin. It made no sense, then, that all he could think of were the thousands of reasons not to sketch the pieces of the soul that lived beneath his skin into the paper he’d stashed away. The thousands of reasons to look away every time Sam laughed or smiled or talked of his childhood. The thousands of reasons not to touch Sam at all. 

“Did I tell you we got the day off?” Gabriel said, breaking the silence they’d fallen into their minds in.

“You mentioned freedom,” Sam said with a grin. “What do you want to do?”

“Don’t care,” Gabriel said. He hadn’t much thought about it. Days off were scarce, being Death and all. Plus, that just meant more time to fill with nothing. He was itching already.

“Can we leave here? Go somewhere else?” Sam asked.

“Like where?”

“Walk through the woods, get food at a diner, see a movie? I don’t care, I’m just going crazy here.”

The years of these walls closed in on Gabriel and there was panic in the potential for danger he could see stretching before him outside and through the forest. It would hardly take a touch to do things that couldn't be undone. But Gabriel looked at Sam and he found himself nodding. Because it was Sam. Because it had been years since he left. Because there were things that tugged at the thing that had planted in his chest.And, because it was Sam. “Okay. Let’s do a diner. I know a quiet place.”

“Can we walk?” Sam asked. 

“Sure, Sammy. It's just down the road a bit. Want to shower first?”

There was still dirt and debris scattered like stars through Sam’s hair from the last two days, blood coating the tips of his fingers where even Gabriel couldn't heal no matter how many times he tried to kiss life back into them. “Yes please.”

“Okay, we’ll meet back downstairs in thirty. That good?”

“Great,” Sam said, body alight at the idea of leaving the mansion. Gabriel could see he wanted to feel human again. He remembered his early years, wanting to feel like anything but what he was, if even for just a moment. He used to stand in the middle of crowds just to feel like he belonged. Invisible, of course. Fingers tucked away where they could do no harm. It eventually passed, that phase, but with Sam here it was itching at the door to be let in again.

Gabriel showered, pulling on a black button up shirt and a pair of gray jeans to tuck it into. He was still Death, he couldn’t shed his preference for darkness. In the mirror, he fiddled with his hair, rummaging through drawer after drawer until he found a comb he hadn’t touched in years to try to tame the hairs that rebelled. After ten minutes, Gabriel shook his head, letting his hair fall where it may and ruining the work he’d put in. What had he been doing, but stalling? His nerves were itching. Must have been the thought of the outside world. 

As he descended the stairs, Sam waited below, peering into the greenhouse. He had changed, too, v-neck black shirt exposing the skin of his throat, the sharpness of his collarbones, too. If Gabriel had a guess, he’d bet Sam’s soul showed up there too, threaded beneath his skin.

“You look nice,” Gabriel said, now down the stairs and faced with Sam upclose. “All that debris did nothing for your eyes.”

“No? I thought ash and asphalt was the new thing,” Sam said.

“Maybe next year. This year it’s shattered glass and flower petals.”

“Oh, my bad, never can keep up with the kids these days.”

Gabriel held out his elbow and Sam slid his arm through with a grin. Gabriel led the way from the house and through the dead trees of the forest he hadn’t meant to claim as his own. 

“You know the kids call this the Forest of the Damned,” Gabriel said as they walked through the spring afternoon. Anywhere else, there would have been flowers to announce spring’s arrival. Anywhere else only got Death in short bursts.

“Oh yeah?” Sam asked. He had his hands in his jean pockets, the sun soft against his face. He turned up to it, soaking the warmth in.

“Mhm, sometimes they dare each other to run in here. To my door. I am a monster to them.”

“What do you do, if they knock?” Sam stopped, once again turned skyward, eyes closed. Gabriel couldn’t tell where the sunlight ended and Sam’s soul began. All of it was gold.

“What monsters do,” Gabriel said with a shrug.  _ I scare them away from my heart. _

“I don’t think you’re a monster Gabe,” Sam whispered after a while. But it had been too long since he’d heard otherwise and the word monster had made a home beneath his skin. 

“You’re not the world,” Gabriel said. Sam blinked his eyes back open, turning away from the sun. He still shone in the middle of the dead forest. Gabriel couldn’t look away.

At the edge of the forest sat a diner. The old building creaked, swayed in the puff of a breath. The road it sat beside was a detour road for the highway a few miles further, and so the only time the bell twinkled at the door more than five times a day was when there was an accident that sent the drivers scattering for another route. The sign outside was a fifties housewife, the tray she held in her hand tilted toward the ground, threatening to spill the balanced burger to the ground at each patron’s passing feet. Gabriel would do no damage here, the ladies behind the counter already breathing Death’s scent with each breath. It came with the years they live, in the ground they tread.

At the table, Gabriel sat with his sleeves pulled around his fists. He chose the table with its back to the wall and he sat pressed close against it. Just in case. 

“Gabe? You not eating?” Sam asked, eyes on the menu still sticky and on the table in front of Gabriel, untouched.

“Don’t want to leave my fingerprints behind.”

“Here,” Sam said, standing. He picked up his chair, muttering about drama queens, and moved it to squeeze in beside Gabriel, moving in close enough to feel his breath against Gabriel’s cheek, so they could read the menu together. This close, Gabriel could feel his body heat and his heartbeat, the flutter of his eyelashes. The thing in his chest ached and he tightened his fists in his lap. He couldn’t touch. Not a thing in this place.

The waitress with years stacked on top of her shoulders took their order with a frown and left the table quickly, scuffed shoes dragging against the stained carpet of the restaurant. The food came and still Sam stayed on Gabriel’s side, a buffer between him and the world around them. He didn’t seem to mind. 

Gabriel poked at his food, taking bites here and there to keep up the illusion for any patrons’ glances that dotted the barren room. There was one at the counter, flip-flops kicking the hollow underside in a rhythm that made everyone flinch, and another at a booth in the corner, half asleep while he chewed.

“How’s the food?” Sam asked, scarfing his plates of food down in seconds. He may not have needed to eat, but it seems his tastebuds were still in working order.

“Fine. Kind of lost the ability to taste anything when I got the gig. The old Death sometimes ate souls.”

“What?” Sam said, fork clattering against his plate.

“Don’t ask me why.”

“Do you miss it?”

Gabriel shrugged. “There are other things I miss more.”

“Like?” Sam urged, fork abandoned on his plate still and eyes on Gabriel.

“Heat, touch.”  _ My heart. _

Sam fell silent, shifting ever so slightly until his knee was touching Gabriel’s. He didn’t move it and Gabriel felt that knot in his chest flood with something warm and unyielding. Sam just went on eating, knowing what he’d done but not knowing how much it meant to Gabriel, who could touch no one but him with this kind of freedom. The possibilities spread out in front of his eyes, the way he could touch and touch and touch. 

Sam nudged Gabriel and he snapped from the trance he’d fallen into. “You alright there?”

“Yeah,” Gabriel said. He couldn’t let himself think like that. He shifted his knee away from Sam and ignored the frown that fell over the man at his side. He couldn’t explain how intoxicating even that was. Couldn’t explain that Sam’s timer was ticking and ticking down, down, down and then there’d be no one to touch anymore. There’d only be empty walls and his empty chest.

On their way back to the house, Gabriel and Sam both took their time carrying themselves onwards. The sun was still high, unstopped by the vacant branches of the trees Gabriel had killed. Sam’s shoulder brushed his as they walked, hands stuffed in his jean pockets, and he spoke up a few minutes in.

“Do you ever save people?” Sam asked, eyes on the way his boots sank into the dewy dirt ground. 

“You mean like don’t take a soul I’m supposed to?” Gabriel asked, stalling. He shot Cas a prayer and hoped he had it turned on.  _ Cas did you tell Sam I saved him? _

“Yeah,” Sam said.

_ No, Gabriel. I wasn’t sure you’d like him to know,  _ Cas prayed back. Gabriel sent him a slightly graphic thank you and turned to Sam where he waited in the sun.

“Uh, I have before, yes.”

“Why?” Sam asked. “What made you save them?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Sometimes, there isn’t a reason. Sometimes, I am just tired of taking so damn much.”  _ Sometimes their souls are too beautiful and bright to kill. _

“How many have you saved?” Sam asked.

“There is trouble if I do. I keep the number on one hand.”

“What kind of trouble?” Sam asked.

“Last time, there was more than a vague mention of tearing my wings off. Feather by feather.”

Sam’s breath hitched in the silence Gabriel left and he turned. “How could you do your job, if God did that?”

“I couldn’t. That’s kinda the point,” Gabriel said. “I’d be sent down to Earth to walk amongst the humans I should have been taking with nothing left of angelhood but my memories and a kiss goodbye.”

“Harsh,” Sam said.

“There is power laid on me. Too much, really. I can leave chaos with each of my fingerprints. Could wipe the planet clean in a snap,” Gabriel said, picking up a leaf long dead and crushing it in his hand to let the pieces scatter. “There are reasons for everything.”

“Gabe, I-I’m sorry,” Sam whispered, pulling his hand from his pocket to rest it on Gabriel’s shoulder. Even through his shirt, Gabriel’s skin lit aflame. The knot in his chest grew and grew, threatening to consume him whole. He turned back towards home and stepped from beneath Sam’s fingers.

When they got back, with time enough to spare before nightfall, Sam went into the greenhouse to sort out the chaos that grew from Gabriel’s heart. It seemed, overnight, the plants inside had caught sight of the sky, stretched out long and reaching. 

At the top of the stairs, Gabriel listened to Sam breathing as he tore weeds from the ground. Listened while looking between his own door and Sam’s. Back and forth, back and forth. He shouldn’t. He wanted to, but he shouldn’t.

Shrugging, Gabriel hurried down the hall, feet silent on the carpet, and he eased his way into Sam’s room. The door was partially open already, he wasn’t invading Sam’s space if he left it open right? He scanned the blank walls, trying to match the clinking from earlier to something in this room. Made bed, spotless desk, nothing added up. Until his eyes landed on a pot in the windowsill where a seed sprouted towards the sun. Underneath it, Gabriel could see paper poking from the edge, folded and scribbled on. 

He chewed his lip, at war within himself. The bastard had used Gabriel’s only weakness to hide his words. Were his secrets worth another thing dead? 

Gabriel took a step, then another, until he was inches from the plant. He held his mouth sealed shut, kept all his fingers but two tucked into his palms so tight his fingernails threatened to break skin. With his silence, he tugged at the paper, freezing when the pot shifted and let out a clank. Listening, Gabriel could still hear Sam downstaris, humming something under his breath, and he returned to easing the paper from under the pot. He got it free just as Sam’s footsteps pressed into a different spot in the dirt and Gabriel hurried from the room, closing the door behind him. He made it to his own, the door half-shut, before Sam even started up the steps. 

Gabriel tucked the paper into the pocket of his jeans and opened the book nearest him as Sam passed his door, leaving the smell of fresh earth and sweat in his wake. He did not stop in. Didn’t say anything, just kept humming and Gabriel let out a sigh of relief. 

_ Dear Gabriel, _ the paper read, after he had shut his door and locked it for good measure.  _ Dear Gabriel.  _ Over and over, the page was covered.  _ Dear Gabriel, Dear Gabriel, Dear Gabriel, Dear Gabriel _ . Gabriel didn’t know how to fill in the blanks Sam had left behind. He knew how he wanted to fill them, but that wasn’t fair. They were not his blanks to fill. There was no way to love Death and so no one ever did. Gabriel knew better than to hope for an exception to this rule.

On the back read,  _ I have started to see the gold beneath his skin. The way the sun reaches through the windows, the trees to find him. The gold in his voice. The gold in his laughter. And his wings, of course, his wings. There is sunset gold threaded through him and I know now to start bracing for night. _

Gabriel loved with a heart full of weeds and he knew better than to speak it. His words were black. They’d strangle the world.

* * *

In the morning, they sat at the table and said nothing to each other. His silence was the truth. Sam, across from him, met Gabriel’s eyes with something swirling, but said nothing to break it. Another blank his mind filled in with words that couldn’t be the truth. The knot in his chest started to burn.

They departed soon after for the first soul of the day, where Gabriel flew them to a hospital that looked like every other hospital they’d seen. Towering, stiff, windows revealing glimmers of souls as he scanned the building where the sunlight touched. 

In a turn of events, it was a nurse whose soul was for the taking. The man sat behind a wooden desk, clipboard in hand and purple-scrub clad. Inside his body, his duodenum perforated for a reason unknown. The pain he pushed away as indigestion all day worsened and worsened, the trips to vomit in the staff bathroom chalked up to some stomach bug he’d treated a patient for a week prior. Now, it was too late. Now, Gabriel was here for his soul.

It was large, wrapped around his vocal cords, sky blue and soft in his throat. He did not fight and Gabriel lifted it from his body with ease. As Gabriel turned away, the man’s body started to slide from the chair and Sam lunged, softened the blow against the tile, lowering him to the ground with gentle hands. The man shook Sam’s hand at Chuck’s door, for saving the body he’d already left. 

“You are kind even to those who don’t need it,” the man said. Sam shook him off with a wave and a smile and Gabriel was struck by how true it was. 

The last soul of the day and they landed in sand, waves of the ocean reaching for their feet. The sun was high, the afternoon well underway, and bodies asked the sun to kiss them in the crowd of people swimming here. 

This time, there was no dock for Gabriel to leap from like he’d done with Sam. Out past the buoys warning swimmers of their limit, hands shot up from the darkness of the water, asking for help. They were adult hands, but all Gabriel could see was Sam out there in the waves. Beside him, Sam turned.

“Go. It’s okay. I’ll wait here,” he said.

Gabriel nodded. There was no way for Sam to follow, no dock for him to wait on. He had no wings and Gabriel needed his hands free to reach beneath the water for the soul to claim. He let his wings unfurl, shuddering in anticipation, and he soared into the air above the water, invisible to the entirety of the beach but for Sam and the soul he needed to take. 

He made a circle, then another, a bird of prey sweeping closer and closer. He needed to find the soul before the water weighed his wings down. His wings were not waterproof, even invisible. Even for Death. The ocean didn’t care who he was. She’d drown them all if she could. And so she tried. The day he’d held Sam above the water, he almost drowned too.

He found the soul, grass green and water-logged beneath the waves. In one smooth dive, Gabriel tucked his wings against his back and dove beneath the water to grab the soul before it sank down to the ocean floor. Knowing it would drown if Gabriel missed it this time, the soul freed itself from its body and met him just beneath the surface of the water.

From the water, Gabriel emerged, shaking as much of the ocean from his wings as he could while he made his way to shore, low to the waves, heavy. He more crashed than landed beside Sam in the sand, dripping with ocean water. He fell to his knees, the landing rocky, and heaved himself back to his feet. All the while, Gabriel was hyper aware of Sam waiting for him. Sam whose soul should have been in his hand all those years ago while his wings dripped with water. Sam who shouldn’t have been here at all.

He sent Sam through to heaven with the soul in hand, even he flooded in silence. Gabriel stayed behind so as not to get water on the tile of Chuck’s hallway. Chuck wouldn't be pleased. He hated messes, especially those left behind by Gabriel. They were common and usually a headache. Gabriel, still lost in memories of the day he let Sam live, decided to save that confrontation for another day when he couldn’t smell sea-water anymore.

Sam reappeared outside heaven’s doors and they went back to the mansion, Gabriel leaving a trail of water and Sam, sand. Sam went straight into the library, and Gabriel dragged a chair from the kitchen to just outside the front door, stripping the shirt from his back and stretching his wings out to sun. He closed his eyes, head back against the chair, and let the afternoon melt into night, lost in thought while his wings dried. 

“Gabriel?” Cas’s voice broke the night.

“Oh, Cas, sorry. Can you wait? I had a drowning, you know how that is.”

“I suppose I can wait for a moment, but make it fast please. I also need a Sam check in.”

“Right, come on then. I’ll let you check it while I write the report. Wings are dry finally.”

Gabriel didn’t bother throwing his shirt on. It took too long to wrangle his wings through the slits in the fabric and it wasn’t like Cas was looking. Cas followed him up to his office in silence. He pointed to the drawer for Cas, knowing Sam’s soul was on the last page of the sketchbook for him to look over while Gabriel scribbled out his report on the souls of the day. It was more monotonous than eventful, just names and a small description of what happened and Cas started to flip through the sketchbook. Gabriel pretended not to be aware of just how many sketches of Sam’s soul there were threaded between the souls of the past week. Pretended not to see Cas studying each one as they grew fuller and fuller and more vibrant with each flip of the page.

“It’s not done,” Gabriel said, eyes on the report, Cas’s silence heavy at his back.

“Okay,” Cas said.

“I mean it. There’s a chunk missing there in the chest. I can’t seem to find it.”

“Gabriel, I’m not arguing with you,” Cas said. He paused. “Just be careful.” His voice was softer. It made Gabriel’s skin crawl. 

“Always am, Cassie. Here’s the report.” Gabriel held out the paper for Cas to take. He kept his eyes down. Maybe Cas wouldn’t see the truth that way. Who was he kidding? Cas was an angel. Cas was his brother. He could see right through him. But, he could pretend Cas couldn't. 

Cas paused at the door as Gabriel expected, he could hear his footsteps sink into the carpet, pressing down each individual fiber. 

“Really, Cas. I’ll be fine. I know what I’m doing,” Gabriel said before Cas could.

Cas snorted but said nothing and before Gabriel could turn around, he was gone. Gabriel sank back against his office chair, rubbing his eyes until starlight appeared behind them in the darkness. What to do when he didn’t think he had a heart to blame all these feelings on? That’s all hearts were for, in the chest of an angel who wasn’t supposed to feel at all. To place the blame. Where now could he place the blame?

Gabriel, so flooded with these thoughts, didn’t hear the door open from the library downstairs. Didn’t notice the footsteps, soft and bare, against the carpet. Didn’t notice the pounding of Sam’s heart as he came closer and closer. It wasn’t until Sam was halfway into the room, scooping the sketchbook Cas had left out into his hands, that it all caught up to Gabriel where he sat.

“Wait,” Gabriel said, hand closing around Sam’s wrist. But it was too late. Sam already had a different sketchbook eerily the same color as the one from years ago propped open under his arm. The one that held his soul from the water. In his hands, the newest one, he was flipping through. He paused on one of his soul, then another, fingers rubbing over the smooth paper, a whisper. Gabriel didn’t let go, didn’t move, turned his eyes to the window. He couldn’t look at this Sam. The Sam that knew. 

“I thought...I thought it was another angel. But, it was you. I asked Cas. He wouldn’t tell me,” Sam looked up. “It was you.”

The older sketchbook, the one from the year Gabriel risked his wings for the boy drowning in the ocean, Sam set down on the desk within Gabriel’s line of sight, open to the drawing of Sam’s soul and labeled with his name. On top of it, he placed the most recent sketchbook, with a much more fully formed soul, a page scattered with gold. His soul was more like a constellation and Gabriel knew he’d be finding stars beneath his skin forever, if he was allowed the chance to look. Still, he was missing a central piece, one close to Sam’s heart. Where had it gone? What could he do to bring it to light?

“This is my soul, isn’t it?” Sam whispered.

“Part of it. Most of it,” Gabriel said. “Yeah.”

“And you’re the one that saved me? I’m the one you almost lost your wings for?”

Gabriel nodded. After a moment, Sam, with his fingers still absent-mindedly tracing the pieces of his soul on the page, spoke again. “I thought, maybe, I didn’t have one anymore. After that day in the ocean, everything just felt...gray.”

“Oh, Sam.” That had Gabriel looking up at Sam who couldn’t meet his eyes. The man who had slid his way beneath his skin. The one who offered his touch so willingly, offered his voice without question. “You couldn’t be more wrong.”  _ Your soul is enrapturing. I could go blind staring. _

“Where?” Sam’s voice cracked.

_ Everywhere,  _ Gabriel wanted to say,  _ every inch of your skin.  _ Instead, Gabriel stood, taking a step closer to Sam until he was inches from him. So close, he could feel Sam’s breath against his lips. So close, Sam’s heart drowned out the sound of the stars. “Let me show you.”

Sam’s breath hitched, heart pounding, as Gabriel lifted Sam’s hand and pressed a kiss against his knuckles. “It’s here.”

Gabriel opened Sam’s palm with soft fingers, pressed a kiss to the soul that lived beneath the skin there. “And here.”

He moved up to Sam’s wrist, the bend of his elbow, breathed against the moonlit skin of his shoulder. With a question in his eyes, Gabriel met Sam’s and started to lift the t-shirt Sam was wearing up over his head. Sam let it happen, no protesting as Gabriel tossed it behind him.

“Here,” Gabriel said, pressing a kiss to the notch of Sam’s collarbone. To the bone of his sternum in the center of his chest. Gabriel ran his tongue down the trail of hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of Sam’s jeans and Sam’s heart kicked up its thundering rhythm. This wasn’t the thunder of Chuck, nor the clouds, but a soft thunder. A warm thunder. One Gabe wanted to get lost in.

Gabriel grinned, moving to kiss the bone of Sam’s left hip, drag his fingers up the soft skin beside his spine while he let his lips move up his side. Between his ribs, Gabriel licked, breath hot against Sam’s skin while goosebumps scattered his body. “Here and here and here.”

Sam groaned as Gabriel’s breath ghosted against Sam’s nipple before letting his tongue circle around the hardened nub, sucking it into his mouth. He moved to the other one as Sam backed up against the desk just to have something stable to hold onto, fingers wrapping around the edge and going white. 

Gabriel moved up Sam’s neck again, sucking at where his pulse pounded like the ocean just beneath his skin, moving up to nip at the soft skin of his jaw. He pressed a kiss to Sam’s cheek, his forehead, the tip of his nose. Everywhere he kissed, he had seen pieces of Sam’s soul and he had thousands of places still to press his lips.

“Just fucking kiss me,” Sam growled, tangling his hands in Gabriel’s hair and meeting Gabriel’s lips with his own. Gabriel was awestruck in an instant, Sam’s lips soft against his, warm, his fingers carding through his hair. Decades of drought and suddenly a rainstorm, and he ran straight into the downpour praying for the lightening to find him. It did. It did. Surging through him, he was electrified. Warm. Thunder rumbled through his chest and he’d never wanted to drown in anything more.

“‘M not done,” Gabriel said, pulling away. Now, with the moonlight scarce and the darkness around them, Sam glowed. His soul shone through his skin, brighter than starlight. He was golden in the darkness, golden, golden. 

Gabriel knelt at his feet, popping the button on his jeans and, with Sam lifting his hips to help, slid them down his thighs and off his feet to find a new home wherever the fuck they landed. Gabriel bent, lifting Sam’s foot in his hand and pressing a kiss to the soft skin on the inside of his heel. “There’s a piece here,” he said.

Another on the inside of his knee, nipping at the softer-than-satin skin on the inside of his thigh while Sam hissed above him into the night. When Gabriel slid his fingers underneath the elastic of Sam’s boxers, tugging those too from his body, leaving him naked and glowing golden in the night. A constellation that looked inviting, a cluster of stars Gabriel so desperately wanted to call home.

Gabriel, from the ground, locked eyes with Sam, letting his breath ghost over Sam’s dick. Sam let out a moan, eyes sliding closed and Gabriel grinned. While Sam’s eyes were closed, Gabriel licked along the underside of his cock, circling the tip with his tongue before starting to take it into the heat of his mouth. 

“Fuck,” Sam hissed as Gabriel took it into his mouth, starting to pull back only to sink down again. Sam’s fingers tangled in Gabriel’s hair, not heavy or forcing, but stabilizing for them both. Grounding. Sam hadn’t ever been anything but grounding and steady. So when his hips started to stutter, a half-restrained give into his building orgasm, Gabriel knew to pull back even before Sam tapped the back of his neck in warning. Gabriel stood, a carpet indent pressed into his skin, Sam’s soul glowing brighter than ever.

“Bed,” Gabriel said. 

“Clothes,” Sam said. He stood from the desk on shaking legs and flopped back onto the bed to watch as Gabriel stripped the clothes from his own body to toss behind him to forget. He looked up to find Sam on the bed looking like the stars, and his chest flooded with fire, with an ache in a soul he shouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t have. 

Adam and Eve did it wrong all those years ago, Gabriel realized looking at Sam. When he made the decision to give into temptation, to cross a line he couldn’t ever retreat behind again, he wouldn’t just bite. He would consume. He would take and take and take all he could, every little bit. He’d tear down the entire tree, eat every apple and the bark too. The line he’d crossed had been lit aflame and Gabriel wouldn’t think about putting out the fire until daylight. And that was hours away.

Gabriel crawled up Sam’s body, pressing kisses to all the places he’d missed on the first pass. His kneecap, the soft skin just above the sharpness of his hipbones, the dimples on the top of his shoulders. 

“Gabriel,” Sam whispered, a plea against his lips and Gabriel couldn’t resist giving in. To this. To everything he asked. “Please.”

Sam flipped them over, Sam on top of Gabriel, hands bracketing Gabriel’s head against the pillows. Sam’s eyes roamed, electricity in his gaze. In the same way Gabriel came up, Sam went down,down, down, mouthing from Gabriel’s lips all the way down to his cock, sucking it into his mouth while his fingers moved farther down. 

“Lube?” Sam asked. Gabriel pointed to the side table, growling because that meant Sam pulled off his dick to get it, leaving him aching and alone. Cold, cold, cold. He was back in an instant, now lubed fingers finding their way to Gabriel’s hole, circling his rim before one eased in slow, stretching Gabriel ever so gently.

At Gabriel’s back, his wings, flat against the bed, fluttered in his pleasure. With one hand working Gabriel open, Sam used his other to card through Gabriel’s wings beneath them, both of them sunlight in the darkness. His fingers were soft, threading through, feeling them out. 

“Sam, come on already,” Gabriel groaned. “Fuck me, please, fuck me.”

“Yeah? You ready? Tell me what you want,” Sam whispered against his skin. 

“Please, Sam, please. Need you. Now. Yesterday.” Gabriel babbled. As he did, Sam shifted his fingers, now three inside Gabriel, brushing his prostate. Sparks flooded his vision, blinking them away to Sam’s grin, and he pulled his fingers free. 

“Yesterday ain’t possible, cupcake,” Sam said as Gabriel grumbled at the absence. Soon, though, Sam’s cock was pressing at his entrance, hard and hot, slicked with lube. Sam kissed him, insistent and heavy, tongue licking into his mouth as he pressed in, gently, slowly, and waited for Gabriel to adjust. 

“This ain’t freeze tag, Sam, move,” Gabriel growled. Sam snorted against his neck, until his laughter turned into moans as he fucked into Gabriel, starting slow at first before the lightning and thunder inside of them lit the world aflame. Sam pressed close, so close Gabriel could feel Sam’s heartbeat inside his own chest. Here, now, he could pretend to be alive. To be human. To be allowed to love like this. 

In the darkness, Sam glowed brighter, brighter, Gabriel too, and as they came, Sam first calling his name then Gabriel not far behind as Sam wrapped his hand around his cock and pumped his hand once, twice, they outshone the moon, the stars. On the other side of the world, the sun flared with jealousy at their beauty. She moved faster that day, wanting to show them who was allowed to be that bright, and the morning arrived insistently as they lay tangled together, fingertips on skin they weren’t supposed to be allowed to touch.

_ I love you, I love you, I love you _ Gabriel let himself think before the sun arrived.  _ I love you, I love you, I love you.  _ Now all that was left was to lose him.


	9. Chapter 9

In the early moments of daylight, before the sun was all the way awake and the sky looked like it was melting, Sam stood, disappeared into the bathroom and came back with a damp towel to clean them both up. After, he didn’t fall back into bed. Instead, he slipped his boxers back on and picked up the sketchbook still on the desk from the night before. He flipped through the pages, no longer stopping only on his own, but taking in other souls too. 

“What’re you doing there, stretch?” Gabriel asked, still tucked beneath the covers of his bed. Sam didn’t respond, instead eyed the empty walls with a tiny grin. Without a word, Gabriel watched with a laziness in his bones, as Sam tore the first soul from the sketchbook in his hands.

He rummaged through the drawer in the desk, emerging with a circle of tape and a triumphant grin in the softness of the morning. 

“Sam? Did you lose your voice last night? I knew I was a pretty good lay, but this hits an all time high.” Sam ignored him still, standing on the bed with the sketch and tape in hand, and he reached up as far as he could before pressing the soul against the white wall and taping it there. Over and over, Sam did it again and again until the wall started to fill with more souls than empty space.

“You just going to watch or are you going to help me?” Sam asked, feet balanced on the parts of the bed Gabriel’s wings didn’t cover, carefully placed and gentle still. 

“Depends on what exactly you’re doing there, Sammyboy.”

“Well,” Sam said, all the while stretching to tape another soul to the wall. “I think maybe it would do you good to see all the souls you saved.”

Grumbling, Gabriel stood, throwing on a pair of sweatpants, and he joined Sam in filling his walls with the souls he’d touched. It felt silly, but Sam was insistent and they filled his room, Sam lifting Gabriel on his shoulders to reach the parts of the wall their arms were too short to get to, teetering and giggling all the while.

They moved to the next bedroom, then the next, Sam going down to retrieve the rest of the sketchbooks Gabriel had hidden away in the library there until all of the books lay empty and the walls of every bedroom were covered in souls. Gabriel while Sam was away, tore Sam’s souls from his sketchbook and stowed them in his desk. He didn’t want those displayed. Not just yet. They were his for now and that’s how they’d remain, knowing what he had to do.

See, with the morning came the panic, rising in his chest like the sunrise out the window. They say nature mirrors life, and so, apparently, did Death. With the sun brought the things he wouldn’t let himself think in the dark. Brought the line they’d crossed, still blazing, into sight.

Gabriel looked at Sam across the room, long fingered and lazy-smiling and his chest caved in on itself. The deadline was nearing, he couldn’t find the last of his soul, and in a few days, Sam would be gone forever.

“Cassie’ll be here soon, you want to shower before we go?” Gabriel asked as Sam surveyed the now covered room.

Sam looked over from where the sunlight kissed him into gold, and he grinned. “Care to join me?”

Gabriel snorted. “I’d love to, but I’ve got something I need to do before we go.”

Sam kissed Gabriel, warm and soft, before leaving the shell of sketchbook he was holding in Gabriel’s hand and disappearing down the hall. Gabriel grabbed the stack of souls that belonged to Sam and shoved them into the back pocket of his jeans just as Cas arrived. 

“Your list,” Cas said, holding it out. He made no comment of the messy bed, of the way Gabriel wouldn’t meet his eyes. Gabriel wondered how far he’d have to go, if he’d have to grope Sam in front of Cas just to get a reaction. See, the angels didn’t care what their brothers did. Not after most of them fell. They weren’t allowed to care anymore.

“Thanks,” Gabriel said.

“See you later.”

“Sure thing.” 

Cas left and Gabriel stood at the windowed wall into the green-house, shocked at the flowers that had appeared overnight, Orange, yellow, red, blue pops of color flooded the ground and the walls, more color than dirt.  He waited for Sam to come downstairs. His feet were soft, but how they seemed to shake Gabriel to his bones as Sam walked around his room, getting ready for the day. As he came down the hall. As he made his way down the stairs. 

“Hey,” Sam said, coming up behind Gabriel and wrapping his arms around his waist, pressing a kiss to the back of his neck. Gabriel counted to ten, let himself sigh against the warmth and life at his back. 

“Hey,” Gabriel said, turning.

“It’s beautiful in there,” Sam murmured. “I’ll have to trim up the overgrowth tonight. My mom told me plants can suffocate themselves, if left to run wild.”  _ Hearts too, _ Gabriel thought.  _ Hearts too. _

“Yeah, that’d be great,” Gabriel said. “Ready to go?”

Sam’s fingers traced circles into the skin of Gabriel’s hips and he nodded. “Let’s go.”

He held out his hand and out the door they went, Sam swinging their hands while Gabriel flew them to their first location.

They landed at the bedside of a frail woman, sinking into her bed. She blinked awake as they arrived and she lifted her thin fingers, knotted with age. In the corner of the room, a sewing table sat flooded with fabric, squeaking with wear and tear. As she looked at Gabriel, she dragged her fingers against his t-shirt, sighing.

“Fabric holds history,” she said to them both. She tightened her fingers in Gabriel’s shirt, grinning. “You’ve touched centuries.” Her smile fell. “But, what of the sadness?”

“You done?” Gabriel asked, sharper than he wanted it to come out, kneeling by her bedside on the tampered down carpet. It was early morning out the window and Gabriel was glad for it. The sun hadn’t caught up. Not to them. Not yet.

She nodded, a glimmer in her eye as Gabriel tugged the soul from her fingers just where he expected it to live and they walked her to Chuck’s door. On his way back, Gabriel fiddled with his shirt, the woman’s words running through his head. If he shook his shirt out, the pieces of souls would scatter like galaxies. When night fell, they’d be brighter than the stars. 

Gabriel linked fingers with Sam and looked up at him. At the way he kept his smile on the edges of his mouth. The way he squeezed Gabriel’s fingers tight in his own. The way he was so beautiful. Gabriel wanted to breathe him into his lungs to stay there forever. Wanted Sam to be the history that lived inside his fabric forever and always. He breathed in deep and snapped.

Standing outside the apartment complex, steel staircases threading up the sides, Sam tilted his head. Here the sun was high. Here, Gabriel could feel the heat of it sliding beneath his skin. He closed his lips, not wanting it to overtake the breath of Sam he’d inhaled into his lungs. Gabriel started forward, Sam’s hand still in his, up the stairs closest to them. 

“Gabe?” Sam started to slow, glancing up at the building.

“You coming Sammy?” Gabriel asked, tugging him up the last of the stairs to the second floor.

“What? Yeah. It just kinda looks like-”

“What?”

“Nevermind,” Sam said, shoulders relaxing.

“Whatever you say kiddo,” Gabriel said. Inside, the ocean had caught up to him, all these miles away. He felt heavy, felt like never moving again. But he kept on forward until he got to the door, flinging it open with a touch of grace and a flip of his hand. Inside, the lights were off, the room dark, and Sam followed. His breath caught when he stepped in, making out the shapes of the furniture in the dimness.

“Gabriel...What is this?” Sam said. He’d realized, finally, that they stood in his apartment from before, still strewn with the things from his past. There was the cup of water he’d sipped the night before Gabriel arrived, there was the note he left for Dean. He looked to Gabriel, wide-eyed, and his heart, a jackhammer in his chest.

“I-” Gabriel started, but what could he say?  _ I can’t carry on, now my heart grows wild. _ He shook his head and made for the door.

“Wait,” Sam said, hand outstretched. “What about-” 

“There can’t be an us, Sam.”

“But, you said, my soul, it’s not done.”

“I know.”  _ All the more reason to send you home, before I’m tempted to touch your soul too. _

Sam ran a hand through his hair. Across the room, Gabriel could hear glass shattering in Sam’s chest. Better to hear his heart shattering than to know it’s still whole and screaming. Sam looked up, ghosts of tears threatening to spill. “You weren’t supposed to lie.”

_ I didn’t. Not once, Sam _ .  _ Not to you. _ Gabriel shrugged. Sam would fill the blanks in there with all the things Gabriel wasn’t. It would make it easier for him to move on.

“What about Ben?” Sam’s voice broke.

Gabriel walked out the door, knowing Sam would think the worst of him in that silence too. He wouldn’t take Ben. How could he do that, to Sam who he loved? He wouldn’t take either of them. Instead he’d trade his own heart for them both and pray what was left of it was enough to convince Chuck to let them be. They each were his souls to take and so he would let them live.

“Wait, Gabe,” Sam whispered from the other side of the door. “Wait.”

Gabriel kept walking, feet silent on the steel stairs. He could fly, but he wanted to hear Sam’s voice. Just one more time. Wanted to picture him on the other side of the door, so very alive despite his sadness. That was the reason for everything.

When he reached the bottom step, Gabriel flew on to the next soul of the day. Then the next. It went in a haze, them all, with Sam’s voice fading in his mind and the imprint of his fingertips ghosting against his skin. When he got home, he sat in front of his empty sketchbook and couldn’t remember a single soul. It was still light, and so he fled downstairs, flinging the door to the garden open and stepping inside. Still they shriveled, and still he stood. 

“Fight back,” Gabriel whispered. “Don’t let me ruin you.”

But, he was Death. What could they do but obey? 

As the sun set and he sank his hands into the flowering life that grew on the other side of the glass, he wanted to scream.  _ I am the master of everything living _ . Shouldn’t he have felt powerful, as the flowers wilted with his touch? Instead, all he could see was Sam, too, there beneath his hands. This is what his love would always become. 

He dug into the dirt, dug and dug and dug, searching. Still his heart never appeared. He’d offer that too.  _ This is what you’ve done to me _ , he’d say to Chuck when he came. Gabriel knew he would. Gabriel knew.  _ What could I do, but love a soul that turned my wings into sunlight? Into gold? _

“Gabriel,” Cas said at the door to the wilting garden his heart used to grow. “What have you done?”

“What I was born to.”

“You were born an angel,” Cas whispered.

“I became something different. I became this.” Gabriel let the dirt fall from his hands, each piece landing and creating an earthquake.

Cas sighed. When Gabriel stood, dirt still covering his hands, his eyes flickered to Gabriel’s chest and he flinched. What had he seen in the emptiness? A black hole, probably. That’s all there’d ever be. “Chuck needs to see you.”

“Tomorrow,” Gabriel said. “Tomorrow.”

Cas nodded and was soon gone, leaving Gabriel to clean up his mess. He stood in the wilted plants now brown, and he blew what was left of Sam out. It too glowed gold inside the glass, settling on the dirt and destruction. He breathed the smell of Death in. He didn’t deserve to keep Sam inside. He would only grow stale and bitter too.

He walked upstairs to the bathroom down the hall and showered quickly, clumps of dirt stuck on the edges of the drain. He crouched, pushed it so it would disappear and sucked in the sobs that wanted out. Back downstairs, he shut the door to what used to be the garden, and the kitchen where Sam sat, and the library where he’d looked so soft, and closed his eyes as he passed the second floor before he fell onto his bed where the souls looked down on him in shame. Why hadn’t he saved them? Why hadn’t he saved them all?

He blinked and it was dark. Another blink, the sun was waking the world. He’d never been able to master time. No one had. 

Cas arrived, standing in the doorway. “Your list.”

Gabriel didn’t move to grab it. Cas sighed, opened his mouth, shut it again. He didn’t know how to help. It was enough he cared at all. He left the list at the foot of the bed, moved to leave again. Gabriel sprang up, grinning, and Cas stepped back. “Great! Thanks, Cassie. See you later.”

“Good luck,” Cas said, frowning at the borderline maniacal cheer Gabriel had cloaked his pain behind.

“I’m Death, what do I need luck for?” Gabriel asked, but when he looked up Cas was gone. Gabriel was alone, the smile falling from his face as he read the list. It held only one name. Sam Winchester. Sam Winchester. Might as well say his own damn heart. 

He’d tried to find that, though. Maybe it had never existed at all. 

The day passed and Gabriel noticed not, stuck trying to make eye contact with the name on the page. With the souls he’d taken, accusing him of playing favorites, threatening to bury him. How to explain that this wasn’t what he planned? He couldn’t explain love. No one had ever been able to. As night fell and the witching world woke, Gabriel snapped himself to Sam’s apartment and cloaked himself into nothingness. 

Sam radiated the smell of sanitation, shoulders trying to touch the floor. The note to Dean still sat on the counter. He’d only touched the doorknob and his keys had shifted from one end table to the other. His boots sat by the side of the couch.

He sat, head back against the couch, eyes closed to the world around him. He didn’t know Death watched, probably expected Gabriel’s touch looming nonetheless. Goosebumps broke across his skin as Gabriel itched to touch where the moonlight met. Remembering the softness, the warmth. He shifted, fingers twitching, and Sam’s eyes flew open. Sam gazed around, eyes sliding past Gabriel. The ache in Gabriel’s chest grew even though he knew he looked no different than any other space of emptiness. He made it so, but still it hurt.

After pausing in the silence to listen for movement, Sam settled back against the couch. “Of course he’s not coming back,” he muttered. 

His eyes closed and, as Gabriel watched the moon slide down the sky, he fell asleep into dreams he hadn’t had in years. Dreams of the ocean. Dreams of gold. Gabriel left before he could call out through the panic and the ocean. Gabriel couldn’t resist before, how could he now he had seen Sam’s soul up close?

He went back home. Cas was coming and with it, Gabriel’s failure. Somehow, he couldn’t find it in himself to care. With a flutter, came the sun and Gabriel’s brother, a paper in hand.

“Go to this location. Hurry,” Cas said, pressing the paper into Gabriel’s palm. Around him was a cloak of something dark and Gabriel knew what that meant. Cas was doing something outside of Chuck’s control. Doing something hidden. He was caring.

“Thank you,” Gabriel said.

“You won’t be thanking me for long. Go.”

Gabriel went.

The glass was still in midair when Gabriel arrived on the scene this time too, asphalt beneath his feet. The sun was still rising, showing the world what the night and Gabriel had done. There was only one car, the windshield exploding into sparkling rain as it met the sun and fell to the ground. The front of the motorcycle seemed to have melted around the tree it had collided with. Nature had never looked stronger.

A woman leaned over the wreckage, speaking to the man in the driver’s seat. A glimpse of long brown hair, the cycle Gabriel had seen outside the apartment, the tall frame laying amongst the shatter, it stopped Gabriel in his tracks. Gabriel didn’t say Sam’s name. Not here. Not while he felt like this. He’d level the world if he did, in his grief and anger and sadness. Everything beautiful would die. Everything Gabriel thought beautiful was dying anyway. What should he care for flowers, with Sam’s time running out. 

His legs couldn’t carry this guilt, though. He sank to the ground, collapsing into the shards of glass. He watched the world he wanted to know bleed and bleed while reality folded around him, wishing for once he too had blood to spill. Then they could bleed out together. Then he could show the world just how much this hurt.

Gabriel sat in the glass all the while the ambulance whirled its way through the traffic, pulling up behind Sam’s cycle. As they loaded Sam onto the stretcher, Gabriel slid into the ambulance, watched while the paramedic’s hands formed tornados from the adrenaline, and he whispered everything he wanted to say.

“If I could, I’d hold your hand and never let it go.” 

Said, “Why can’t I fucking hold your hand?” 

Said, “Sorry” more times than he could remember, all while his chest ached and ached.

Said, “Remember, Sam, when you asked me how I wanted the world to end? I said with cold, but I was wrong. So wrong. If I could choose, I’d want it to end with you. Kinda feels like it already has.”

At the hospital, the paramedics unloaded Sam and wheeled him down the hallway. just as two angels arrived, each taking one of Gabriel’s arms. “Whoa, fellas, I’m not up for both of you at once. One at a time, maybe.”

They snapped and Gabriel couldn’t speak. He watched Sam disappear down the hall and let his limbs go limp. What was the point in fighting anymore? They flew to heaven in silence and dropped him to the ground outside Chuck’s door. Bastard didn’t even open it for five minutes, all the while Cas made puppy eyes at him from across the room.  _ I don’t blame you, _ Gabriel wanted to say. If he had words, though, he wasn’t sure he would say anything at all. 

The door swung open and Gabriel pasted a smile on his face as the binding spell lifted from his vocal cords. “Pops, how lovely to see you today. To what do I owe the honor?”

“Sit,” Chuck said, in the maroon office full of books, sitting behind his keyboard waiting to write Gabriel’s fate. This is how it went. There would be talking, he would decide the punishment with a few clicks of his keys. Gabriel never really saw the point of giving him any hope, he wouldn’t change Chuck’s mind. Never had before.

Chuck leveled him with a glare and Gabriel shrugged. He had already lost his world in that hospital where Sam sat, flooded with tubes and comatose. Nothing left to lose now. “Gabriel. I asked you to do something.”

“And, seeing as though it was something I didn’t want to do, I didn’t,” Gabriel said, picking shards of glass from beneath his skin. He dropped them onto Chuck’s desk. There was no blood even then.

“Take Ben, then, if you won’t take Sam. Those are the rules, Gabriel. You signed that contract too.”

“No,” Gabriel said. “They’re my souls and no one can take them but me.”

“Take Sam.”

“No.”

Chuck sighed, took his fingers off the keys of his keyboard. He turned to the window, searching. “Why him?”

All of the reasons flooded up, threatening to spill out his lips and drown the world. Maybe this is how the ocean did it. She got into your heart and then made it bleed. She knew love was the only thing with enough words to flood everything and still have more left over. Gabriel shrugged, trying not to choke on it all.

“Show me. Tell me why.”

“Why should I? You are the reason my heart is dead. You are the reason I can’t touch anything without killing it. You made me this way. This is your fault.”

Chuck flinched with something like guilt before leveling Gabriel with his gaze again. “I didn’t take your heart.”

“No, but you didn’t put it back. Whatever’s in here,” Gabriel said, hand over his chest, “is dying.” Sam was dying. What was the difference? Gabriel cleared the ocean from his throat. “Besides, I never did find the rest of his soul. He is not the one I’m supposed to take.”

“No?” Chuck asked. Gabriel shook his head, hands going to rub his chest where the knot that formed started to flare. Chuck followed his fingers with a raised eyebrow. “You sure about that?”

“What?” Gabriel said. Chuck nodded to his chest. Gabriel looked down to find a chunk of gold glowing from his chest, the gold of sunset, the gold of Sam’s soul. Sam, when they’d shared his heartbeat between them, when he’d touched Gabriel and smiled, when he’d touched and touched and touched despite who Gabriel was, had left a piece of his soul inside Gabriel’s chest where the hollow of his heart was.

“Oh,” Gabriel said. 

“Oh, Gabriel,” Chuck said.

They fell into silence, Gabriel unable to pull his hand away. It had been centuries since he’d felt this kind of heat without touching someone else. It was unsettling. It was intoxicating. It was Sam. How long had it been there? How had he not noticed?

“Tell me why.”

And Gabriel thought fuck it. Show the bastard all the things he’d be taking away. Keeping Sam’s smile to himself, he sent memory after memory foward to play through the room like a movie. There was Sam, on the shore, listening to the ocean call. There was Sam, taking to the astronaut with only three things on his page. There was Sam, sitting at Ben’s bedside with gentle words and gentler fingers. There his garden was, his door shut. There it was again, door flung open and growing.

His note, Gabriel read.  _ Dear Gabriel, Dear Gabriel _ . Sam’s hands buried in the garden and the way they softened after Gabriel said his heart was buried beneath it all. There was the garden, Sam had touched. There it was all dead again now Sam had gone. 

Hours passed and still Gabriel had more to show. See his laughter and the way the sun cries to be that bright? See his sadness and the way the ocean hopes to be that deep? See this man and the way the world makes more sense with him? See the world now he was no longer?

Gabriel didn’t know when Chuck had held up his hand, hadn’t heard him whisper that it was enough. Gabriel had a soul now, and couldn’t help but show every part of it to the man he called his father, the man who kept him alone and isolated. The man who made Sam so beautiful and then asked Gabriel not to touch.

“Enough,” Chuck boomed, thunder on his breath.

“Never,” Gabriel said, voice aflame.

“Gabriel. I am sorry, truly, but rules are rules. You must take him or he gets no last wish of his own.”

Chuck was right. If Gabriel ever skipped a person, their soul would rot on Earth. No last wishes. No closure. No peace. “He could get better.”

Chuck shook his head, sharp. “He won’t.” 

Gabriel almost considered begging, but then Chuck spoke again. “You aren’t supposed to care.”

“I had forgotten how to until him. Now, it is all I can do.”

“Don’t you want him to have a last wish?” Chuck asked.

“I want him to have every wish.”

“It’s too late for that.” Chuck sighed. “What if I let you talk to him? Just for a moment? Would you take him then?”

“Is that all you can do? All you can give me for what you’ve made me become?”

Chuck nodded. “Five minutes and I won’t take your wings. Count yourself lucky.”

Gabriel wanted to tell him to fuck off. Wanted to say no. But the thought of Sam’s soul rotting was too much pain. He’d get his wish even if it meant Gabriel couldn’t get his. He deserved a peaceful afterlife, with how tender he’d been to Death.

“Bring him here, Gabriel. I’ll grant him anything.”

Gabriel sighed, snapped before he answered. Chuck knew where he was going. Why waste his words?  From the ground floor, Gabriel could feel it. The soul in his chest was yearning for the rest of it. He followed the ache to the second floor, feeling it pull and pull. He’d have to give it back. Have to give back the piece Sam had left behind. He just didn’t know how, now it had taken root in place of his heart.


	10. Chapter 10

It was strange, walking into a hospital room that held a person but didn’t feel like it. It was the lack of breath, Gabriel thought, or the machine-heart beat flooding the room. Point is, Gabriel was chilled by the way Sam didn’t thrum with life here. Didn’t radiate throughout the room like he did everywhere else. Even when he was sad, he was vibrant. Here, he was nothing of the sort. Pale, still, everything Sam was, was gone. 

It felt like standing at a grave but without the privacy and smell of dirt weeping. Gabriel stood in the doorway for a moment, taking a breath before surging forward to the chair beside Sam, trying not to think about how easy it would be to run from the room and never look back. 

“Sammy?” Gabriel whispered. There was only the beeping of his heart in response. Gabriel turned to the ceiling. “I thought I’d be able to talk to him?”

_ Be patient, Gabriel. _

“Yeah, right,” Gabriel snorted.

_ Yeah right, what?  _ But it wasn’t Chuck. It was softer, warmer.

“Sam?”

_ Gabriel.  _ Gabriel reached out to hold Sam’s hand before remembering, recoiling before his fingertips could brush Sam’s skin. He had grown too used to being able to touch Sam, and now that too was gone. Was there nothing soft that could be his anymore?

“Sam, I’m sorry. I have done this to you.”

_ I knew what I was doing when I signed that deal, Gabriel. Now it’s time to carry it through. _

“I found your letter,” Gabriel blurted. 

_ I know. My plant was alive when I left my room, dead when I came back. _

“Care to fill in the blanks for me, Sammy? It’s our last chance you know.”

_ I think you know. We’d fill them the same, I think. _

“No,” Gabriel said. “I’m not sure we would.”

_ Dear Gabriel, I think I love you. _

“Dear Sam, you left a piece of your soul in my chest where my heart was lost long ago.”

_ Is that what the gold was? _

“You saw it?”

_ It’s been there for days. Thought maybe you had one too and just weren’t telling me.  _

“I’m here to give it back,” Gabriel said. A nurse came into the room, buzzing around without seeing Gabriel in his chair. He froze anyway, careful not to move.

_ Keep it,  _ Sam said. 

Gabriel waited until the nurse left, feeling each of his last moments slip by. Didn’t she know he needed these seconds? She made for the door and Gabriel held back the urge to shove her out and slam the door. Then, she was gone. Gabriel turned back to Sam’s still body, a piece of hair out of place on his forehead. “I can’t. You can’t get into heaven without it.”

_ I won’t go willingly if you don’t keep it. _

Gabriel sighed, shaking his head. “You sure do know how to make a man fuzzy inside.”

_ Don’t be mad. _

“At you? Only for a moment.”

_ Moment over? _

“Duh.”

_ I’m ready, Gabriel. You’ve got to do it. I don’t want to see my brother see me like this. Nurse said he’s on his way. _

“Sam,” Gabriel choked, “how can I?”

_ Here. I’ll do all the work. Right partner’s worth it right? _

Beside Gabriel, Sam’s soul surged from the map it made across his body, clustering in the palm of his hand. It grew brighter and brighter, the sun no match for the light in Sam’s hand. Gabriel hovered above it, leaning down to press a kiss to Sam’s forehead as he took his soul from his hand. 

_ I love you, I love you, I love you. I have lost you. _

Sam’s soul emerged at his side and he slid his hand into Gabriel’s. Gabriel tried not to think about how this time, his skin wasn’t warm. How this time, it would be his last. Sam led Gabriel from the hospital by the hand, down the stairs, and into the fading afternoon. He turned to Gabriel on the edge of the sidewalk, profile fuzzy but soft in the sunset. Gabriel reached out, let his fingertips trail from Sam’s forehead to the hollow of his collarbone, and flew them to Chuck’s door.

“Hey, Sam,” Cas called. Sam nodded in his direction, hand still in Gabriel’s. Gabriel squeezed it once, twice, a heartbeat to match the one they both had lost. And then he let go, flying back home before Sam had even opened the door. 

Gabriel stared at the way the piece of soul in his chest lit up the ceiling. It was strange he hadn’t seen it before. He wasn’t looking, always had some other reason for the light. The sun, the moon, Sam, Sam, Sam. He stared at the ceiling, tracing fingers over the edges of soul in his chest, mapping out the only piece of Sam he’d ever have. 

In this manner, the hours dragged. Gabriel felt every second shove the knife deeper into his gut. He had loved. He had lost. How fitting, for Death to have felt it too. Knowing this is what he left in his footsteps, his fingers turned into fists. He wanted not to touch another soul. Hadn’t he filled graveyards enough? Hadn’t he filled the sky? Now he would melt into the Earth and no one would notice for years and years.

“Gabriel?” 

Gabriel shot up from the bed, soul in his chest straining out. Cas stood in the doorway, watching with narrowed eyes. The morning had come. His grieving was done.

“Sorry, what?” Gabriel dragged a hand over his face and slid from the bed. He didn’t bother with a fake smile. There was nothing left inside to let him try.

“Chuck’s not taking souls today so bring them to my desk.”

“Why not?” Gabriel asked. Cas winced but said nothing and Gabriel didn’t pry. “Sure,” Gabriel said, taking the list. There were four names. Gabriel didn’t wait for Cas to leave before he did too.

The first was a little boy with brown hair that fell into his eyes and Gabriel wouldn’t let himself meet the boy’s eyes just in case they were hazel. He didn’t let the boy tangle his fingers in Gabriel’s feathers, but he did hold his hand all the way to Cas’s desk. His soul was of the ocean and Gabriel thought this is what Sam would have been if the ocean had slipped inside for just a moment longer.

Cas took the child’s hand, looking at Gabriel with something searching in his eye. Gabriel turned away before Cas could find the pain he was looking for.

He moved on. The next was a building fire and Gabriel sighed, stepping through the heat to find the three souls that waited inside. The first he found on the floor, near the door and reaching out. He slid the soul from that person, patting their shoulder before sending them outside to wait for the other two. He would take them all together.

He found the second, flame orange and blending into the fire that tore the building apart. It would collapse soon, he could feel it cracking. Nature and gravity working in tandem to tear the world apart. 

The third, took what felt like hours to find. There were five floors in the building and he moved through the first with scanning eyes. The second he took slower, peering into the flames closer. Had it blended like the last? By the third floor, the heat was getting to him. He didn’t breathe, but the smoke slid inside anyway, trying to find a way out too. 

By the fourth, Gabriel could feel soot smeared across his skin. It was on his eyelashes. It was clouding out the glow of Sam’s soul in his chest. He itched for fresh air, itched for the sun, itched for something other than the heat filled darkness he had landed in. 

He found the last soul on the roof, turning his wings into galaxies like they’d been trying to peer into when the fire below had taken hold of the walls they balanced on.  _ They’re all dead. Don’t stare at them too long or they’ll slide inside of you too,  _ Gabriel wanted to warn. 

He emerged, soot covered and seeping with the darkness he tried to keep from his chest. Would it destroy the only piece of Sam he had? Would Sam’s soul choke on the smoke too? Gabriel coughed, blackness dissipating from his mouth and into the clean air. He hoped it was enough.

He led his group to Cas’s desk and the souls chattered over each other for Cas’s attention. While Cas was overwhelmed, Gabriel stole a look at Chuck’s door to find it open. He stepping into the room to find it empty. There was nothing left of Sam in here, no gold rooted in the carpet. He sighed and went back home, list completed for the day.

He beelined for his bed and fell into it, awaiting another slow night. Footsteps echoed upstairs and Gabriel groaned. “No report today, Cas. Leave me alone.”

“You taking good care of my soul?”

Gabriel froze, peeked one eye open to find someone much too tall to be Cas standing in his doorway. “Sam?”

“Hey, Gabriel,” Sam said, leaning against the doorframe. He was bright, skin glowing. There was no heartbeat in his chest, though, and Gabriel knew what that meant. Gabriel stood up, stopping in front of Sam where he stood. 

“Just came to say goodbye then?”

Sam closed the distance, kissing Gabriel before he could blink. The soul in Gabriel’s chest started to shine, Sam starting to shine too. Sam was warm like the fire, but softer and he wouldn’t mind if Sam’s smell would sink into his lungs forever. 

“Not again,” Sam said, pulling away. 

“I don’t understand.”

“Chuck asked me for my last wish.”

“And?”

“You were it.”

Gabriel, despite the thousands of questions running through his head, pulled Sam into a kiss again, soft, sweet, a sigh. Sam let his fingers brush Gabriel’s skin, never pulling them from his skin. It was just as good as before, his hands like a heaven Gabriel hadn’t known in years, to feel someone’s, to feel  _ Sam’s, _ touch again. Behind him, Gabriel’s wings unfurled, radiating gold throughout the room. So bright, Sam had to shield his eyes. So bright, there would be no sun to match it. Not now. Not ever.

“Gabriel,” Sam said, burying his face in Gabriel’s neck to block out some of the brightness. He was grinning, Gabriel could feel it against his neck. This close, he couldn’t feel Sam’s heartbeat anymore. He had sacrificed that too.

“It’s you, Sammy. It’s you.”  _ Everything bright about me has always been because of you. _

“It’s you too now.” Sam traced his fingers over the spot on Gabriel’s chest where he could see Gabriel’s soul. He had Death’s eye for it and Gabriel knew what that meant. 

“So...you here to stay?”

“If you’ll have me.”

_ Of course,  _ Gabriel wanted to say.  _ How could I not want you to light my world in gold? _ Instead he kissed Sam, running his fingers over all the places on his face and neck where his soul lived. That was answer enough.

In the morning, when Cas arrived with the list of souls for the day, Sam took Gabriel’s hand and, together, they stepped out the doorway of the house with walls that finally felt like home, Sam grinning and Gabriel grinning too. In the greenroom where all the dead flowers lay, a sprout appeared, reaching, reaching for the light.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think below! Also, come say hi on my tumblr [ here](http://kibberswrites.tumblr.com/)! I'd love to hear from you! Hope you liked it!  
> Again, go yell at Tony and tell her how stunning her art is [ here](http://teenytinytony.tumblr.com/)!


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